Tech Leadership Assignment: Story shaper

Success:

• The prioritized and ready lanes have stories that are estimated in such a way that leads to low volatility, understandable to the stakeholders of the story (Eng, QA, Design, and release notes that are geared towards any non-tech stakeholder).
• If story cycle time is low, that is likely because the stories are appropriately sized. If they are appropriately sized, and the squadmates feel as they know exactly what is next best to work on, you are executing this role at a very high level.

Deliverables:

• Actionable stories

Details

• Usually, only one per squad per quarter
• Takes the epics and ensures that stories are decomposed in such a way that it will ensure the best flow for the squad.
• Usually a full stack engineer or a very technical product owner. Stories can, but likely shouldn't need much work done to them after you have done your magic to them.

AKA

• Squad progress enabler (epic to actionable stories)
• Story backlog groomer

From our recent job description

You will take the slices of work (epics) and break them into specific, actionable stories so that we can ship as effectively as possible (which means the stories are as small and as clear as possible). Ultimately we want stories that help us with forecastability and understandability on a pursuit of continuous value delivery.

How we decompose and sequence the stories requires an understanding of the UI, backend, and any other constraints. Though you’ll be doing your best if you’re getting help from your squad, the bulk of this work will fall to you to ensure it is being done well.

Success looks like:

• We use a kanban board style of project management tool, but we encourage each squad to work in a way that is most effective for the squad. We have 3-week check-ins as a department, so some work in 3-week sprints, while others use a pure kanban. You’ll be successful if your squadmates are clear on what is up next.
• We use multiple metrics that help us measure the health of our delivery. One of them that helps us identify if we have bottlenecks is story cycle time. You’ll be successful if stories are a similar size and therefore have a relatively consistent cycle time.

Key Results/Outcomes

• We take slices of work (epics) and break them into specific, actionable stories so that we can ship as effectively as possible.
  • Stories are as small, as clear as possible, and have a relatively consistent cycle time.
  • Stories also help us with forecastability and understandability in our pursuit of continuous value delivery.