Step 1: Well written epic with Business stories
An epic is one big piece of product functionality. Usually, it is too big to be completed in one sprint and should be split up into smaller bodies of work. For instance, an epic may be “Grouping would enable users to merge people or organizations adding flexibility to their analysis“
Epic should contain (Hypothesis statement)
| Name | A short name for the epic |
| Description | A value statement that describes the epic in a clear and concise way. For <customer> who <do something> the <solution> that <provides this value> unlike <current solution or application / screen / functionality> our solution <something better – the why> |
| Business Outcomes | The measurable benefits that the business can anticipate |
| Leading Indicator | The early measures that will help predict the business outcome <MVP> |
| Nonfunctional requirements | Any nonfunctional requirement associate with the Epic |
Step 2: During IP Sprint
Step 2: Refine the epic with Team / Leads (If its done via program incremental (PI) session, that will be ideal to have all members – Future Goal).
Step 2.1: Break down the epic into small (business) epics if its large during epic refinement
Step 2.2: Identify the enabler epics during epic refinement
Step 2.3: Create story card during epic refinement
Step 2.4: Identify all the stacks and its epic or story card
Step 2.5: Identify the dependency within each stack
Step 2.6: Identify the dependency from external teams
Step 2.6.1: Create stories for external teams
Step 2.7: Agree upon which epics priority, since by end of refinement there could have been n number of small business and enabler epics.
Step 3: High level design
With step 2: consider 1 to 3 prioritized epics for design discussion
Tips: Make sure all stack members including external team tech member are available to start the designing session
Try to plan for one session (1-3 hrs / 1 days) locked together to brainstorm with different stack to identify the challenges and risk
Step 3.1: Update or Create story card (1 or 2 sentence with high-level acceptance criteria’s)
Step 3.2: Prioritize the story card, lineup with dependency
Tips: Don’t plan for stack and resource availability at this point, (eg) then Champ will be complete, even though there is high dependency on new API
Step 3.3: Provide High-level story points
Step 3:4: Group the story cards for Sprints (n, n+1, n+2..)
Step 3.5: Create all stories for n+1 and n+2 Sprints
Step 4: Sprint Refinement
Refine only well written stories (Business and Enabler) which are already group during Epic refinements of Design meetings
Tips: Make sure all Engineers (Dev & QA) including external team are actively participating during the sprint refinements.
Avoid additional design session, its better to clarify all details within sprint refinement. If additional design needed by engineers – no hard rule but make sure to account the capacity during sprint planning day
Step 5: Sprint Planning
Completely refined stories are consider for planning day
Step 5.1: Engineer should have confident to do planning poker, for story pointing.