User Stories Validation – How Much Change Is Too Much?

scrumuser-storyvalidation

While the core of requirements development and acceptance criteria would ideally take place during the planning meeting in order to create a better estimate, Scrum encourages continuous interaction with the product owner throughout the sprint to validate and refine user stories.

  • What kind of criteria is used to judge if there is too much change being imposed on a user story mid-sprint?
  • When is it appropriate to change the requirements of the user story?
  • When is it appropriate to cancel the user story / sprint in order to re-evaluate and re-estimate a user story in question?

Best Answer

I am in favor of locking down stories fairly quickly in their life cycle. Requirements should be set after less than a day's worth of discussion in most cases. After that point, it's up to the product owner to decide if those requirements are actually something they want. If they aren't, cancel the story. If they are something they want or partly what they want, complete that story, and create a new story for the following changes.

When in doubt, fight for creating a new story. Constantly changing the requirements just keeps moving the goal posts for the developers. That isn't fair to them, and it's bad for morale.