Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Small stories

If your stories are small, discrete pieces of work, Kanban fits well – no one story choked the backlog and stories didn’t need to be completed in groups. The business then has the flexibility to change the backlog of any story not on the Kanban board which means the process allowed the business to keep up with the development team. The business focuses on fewer stories, meaning that the stories they did focus on are of much higher quality. Keeping only 2 critical stories in the product backlog at any one time (limited by WIP), enables a fluid prioritization of the rest of backlog. The business team, who determines the content of the stories, is able to focus only the top few, leading to better time management and clearer stories.