Hey, Richard here.
There’s something in our web traffic stats that’s fascinating to me.
The most popular content we’ve ever published is something I first wrote in 2007, created an infographic for 2012, and expanded and updated in 2020 (view here). And it’s still going strong, drawing thousands of views every month.
The topic? Splitting user stories.
It’s now 2025. Why are we still talking about story splitting?
This persistent interest reflects a broader trend and need in software development.
The Trend
Agile is now the default approach, and tools like Jira call everything a “story.” More people than ever are trying to apply user stories in some form. But they’re often working with components or tasks dressed up in a story costume rather than true user stories.
User stories, as they emerged from eXtreme Programming, are something specific: they’re small changes in system behavior described from the perspective of a user who’ll experience that change. When used this way, stories are incredibly powerful. This connects a team to the impact of their work, makes them more likely to build the right thing, and gives them room for autonomy on the solution because they really understand the goal.
The challenge comes when teams try to split big user stories into smaller ones. Teams look at a big story and think, “This can’t be split without breaking it apart into technical pieces.” Without the right skills, that’s exactly what happens—the story gets carved up into components or tasks, even if we still call them “stories.”
The Need
If user stories are valuable but fake user stories are rampant, there’s a pressing need for coaches who can help teams actually get the benefits of real, small user stories.
Story splitting is a very learnable skill. With about three hours of deliberate practice, you can go from “that’s not splittable” to “oh, it’s another one of those, I know how to split it.” I’ve seen this transformation countless times.
This rapid learning curve creates an interesting challenge for coaches. Once you know how to split stories effectively, it’s hard to imagine not knowing it (hello, Curse of Knowledge!). If you’re a coach who finds story splitting easy, you might find yourself in a tricky situation. What seems obvious to you isn’t obvious to your client, and your personal skill doesn’t automatically translate into being able to help someone else develop the skill.
Want to level up your story splitting coaching game? Join me next week for a special session designed specifically for coaches. I’ll share key lessons from years of successfully coaching story splitting, including:
- How to help each role see the benefit of good story splitting for them
- How to avoid and overcome common story splitting pitfalls
- How to structure practice sessions to help a team develop story splitting skills quickly and reliably
- The thing that often needs to happen before trying to split a story…and how this solves the “unsplittable story” problem
- The deeper pattern behind the story splitting patterns that you can use to get around difficult cases
- How to recognize good and bad splits so the team is set up for success when they get into the work
- And more!
This session isn’t about making you better at splitting stories—you’ve probably got that down already. It’s about making you better at helping others develop this crucial skill. In 2025, with more teams than ever trying to use stories effectively, this knowledge is more valuable than ever.
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