Practice Area

Agile and Scrum

Writing and Splitting User Stories


  • Traditional Classroom: ½-day
  • Virtual Instructor-led: One 4-hour session; Two 2-hour sessions; One 3-hour session

The overall goal of the course is to provide participants with the knowledge to write valuable user stories with acceptance criteria and to prioritize and size the stories. Participants will also discover how to split stories so that they can be completed in one iteration or sprint.


Target Audience

Individuals who will benefit from this workshop include members and leaders of agile teams, especially those involved in writing user stories.

Learning Objectives

  • Identify the hierarchy of the product backlog from vision to epics, features, stories, and tasks.
  • Experience writing and splitting stories with measurable acceptance criteria.
  • Recognize the importance of a Definition of Done (DoD) and Definition of Ready (DoR).

Course Outline

Getting Started
  • Introduction
  • Workshop Orientation
  • Expectations
Foundation Concepts
  • Vision
  • Product Backlog
  • Epics and Features
  • Exercise: Writing Features
  • Splitting Features into Stories
Writing User Stories
  • Format
  • Personas
  • Exercise: Document a Persona for Your Product/Project
  • How Do You Know if the Stories are Written at the Right Level?
  • Acceptance Criteria
  • Exercise: Document Two Acceptance Criteria for Each Previously Written Story
  • Discussion: Why and how would you split stories?
  • Exercise: For Each of the Defined Feature Write Two Stories with Two Acceptance Criteria for Each Story
  • Definition of “Ready”
  • Discussion: What should be included in a Definition of Ready?
  • Definition of “Done”
  • Exercise: Document a Definition of Done
Estimating User Stories
  • Relative Sizing
  • Exercise: Relative Sizing
  • Planning Poker
  • Discussion: Pros and Cons of Agile Estimating Techniques vs. Traditional
Prioritizing User Stories
  • Prioritizing Techniques
  • Discussion: Which would be the best technique for your product/project?
Summary and Next Steps
  • Summary
  • Exercise Review Contest

MDV5013 Course Code

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