A user story containing unknown elements should be split into a
spike to investigate the unknown
elements plus a user story to develop the functionality. This
enables the customer to prioritise the research separate from the
implementation of the new functionality. Without a
spike to substantiate the estimate
for the user story, the customer may incorrectly assume the
estimate to be valid and prioritise the user story accordingly.
Facing a
spike and an associated user
story, the customer should prioritise the
spike ahead of the user story to
obtain a more reliable estimate for prioritising the user story.
Next post in this series:
User stories part 4: Collaborating to write acceptance tests
Previous posts in this series:
User stories part 1: What is a user
story and who writes them?
User stories part 2: Adaptive
planning
References:
[1]
Mike Cohn 's
Agile Estimating and Planning
Friday, 10 February 2006
User stories part 3: Using spikes to help estimate user stories
Posted by Simon Baker - Permalink
