Succeeding with Agile

Progressively Refine Plans

In Chapter 13, “The Product Backlog,” we learned that the product backlog should be progressively refined. Capabilities that will be added well into the future are initially put on the product backlog as epics and later split into smaller user stories. Eventually these stories are so small that they do not need to be split further. But they are then refined one last time by adding conditions of satisfaction that describe high-level tests, which will be used to determine whether the story has been completed.

A good Scrum team takes a similar approach to planning. Just as an epic describes the essence of a feature but leaves out specifics, an early plan captures the essence of what will be delivered but leaves the specifics ...