What is the best way to handle user stories that exceed your team's capacity or velocity?

When dealing with user stories that exceed your team's capacity, break them down into smaller, manageable tasks. Break down functionalities, identify key components and prioritize. For example, separate frontend and backend work, focus on core features and handle different sub functionalities separately. By dividing the workload, team can maintain a sustainable pace, meet deadlines and deliver incremental value to users without feeling overwhelmed.

Shouldn't the question be here, why the team is taking a Requirement (user story) in the Sprint if it is exceeding their capacity or velocity? Is it being forced upon the team? Shouldn't this be identified much earlier, probably in a backlog refinement session?

by: Prioritization Slice User Stories Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Negotiate Scope Parallelization Dependency Management Temporary Team Expansion Reassess Velocity Retrospective Analysis Educate Stakeholders Buffer or Slack Time Continuous Improvement

We can try different options like :- Scope Negotiation with PO to see if scope of stories can be adjusted without compromising on essential functionality Consider moving story to a future sprint if it does not compromise with the current sprint goal Skill Enhancement- Assess gaps within team that if addressed can improve efficiency Review DoD- Ensure DoD is clear and realistic Limit WIP- Enforce WIP Limits to prevent team from taking too much work at once. Continuous Improvement:- Identify bottle necks,process issues or areas of improvement and take corrective actions Bring to Management Attention- If the situation persists, highlight to management on additional assets (people)

?? Embracing project success in Agile, particularly Scrum, boosts team spirit and productivity. I'd start by recognizing each team member's unique contributions, making them feel valued. In retrospectives, celebrate not just the outcomes but the journey and learning. Publicly acknowledging the team's achievements in meetings or emails lifts morale. Planning team outings or fun activities strengthens bonds. Emphasize the growth and learning from the project to encourage a culture of continuous improvement. Lastly, celebrate customer satisfaction – a testament to the team's hard work and commitment. These celebrations drive motivation and unity. ??????????

Deferring User Story should be done together as a team and stakeholders need to be informed. This could be applied to low priority User Story (whether it's originally low or become lower over time). Utilize your ticket management tool such as Jira or ADO to keep track on deferred User Story. Whenever the team is ready, it could be pulled back to the active Sprint

We need to consider multiple aspects before we defer the story.. 1. Business value of the story and priority. 2. If the story has external dependencies. 3. If it's an enabler story. 4. If the story is tech debt. We need to use tagging extensively to identify such stories which have external dependencies or are tech debt stories which can be deferred easily if the team is overloaded.

I’m curious why user stories aren’t primarily coming from the users? This appears to be an exercise to define work by just altering the format to a new ”different” way of writing the work.

Continuous revisiting of story priorities and estimate is important. Priorities of stories may change overtime as we progress in the project. Based on the priority and value addition, stories can be deferred to another sprint. And yes, deferring a story does not mean ignoring it. It should still be part of all discussions and closely tracked.

Deferring a user story means postponing its implementation to a later time. This can happen for various reasons, such as changes in priorities, dependencies on other features, or a need for more information.Here are common ways to defer a user story. 1. Prioritization 2. Dependency on External Factors 3. Insufficient Information 4. Resource Constraints 5. Change in Business Priorities 6. User Feedback or Testing Outcomes When deferring a user story, it's crucial to communicate this decision transparently to the relevant stakeholders, especially the product owner and the development team. It helps manage expectations and allows for better planning and prioritization in subsequent iterations.

Best way to handle user stories that exceed planned sprint capacity would be to 1) start a dialog with stakeholders to understand the priority, 2) negotiate scope of story and acceptance criteria, 3) align the new story in the backlog to be pulled in next sprint depending on priority and 4) keep it in mind to pull it in current sprint if capacity becomes available during the sprint.

I negotiate with my team when we have a story that is too big. We look at the sprint and determine value, discuss if it will cause context switching or added stress to complete the sprint if we add it. We also look to see if it can be broken down to in the sprint to show progress. Once the team decides, I let the stakeholders know and provide what went into the decision from the team. If we didn't put it in the current sprint, then we discuss how it can be a priority for the next sprint.

The best way to handle user stories which exceed the team's capacity is to break down user stories by negotiating with the stakeholders. 1. Take the user story to stakeholders and explain the situation of not being able to accommodate the story in the current sprint 2. Lay down definition of done along with all the acceptance criteria segregated by user personas. 3. Negotiate the trade off of various acceptance criteria and try to break down the user stories. 4. Once it reaches a win-win situation break the user story and move them in current and consecutive sprints.

"For example, you may negotiate the scope, quality, time, or cost of the user story. You may also negotiate the acceptance criteria, the definition of done, or the minimum viable product." First, let's not say you can negotiate quality. If you've negotiated quality then the user story is in fact not done. A completed user story should always represent a tested change to the system. The same concern applies to the definition of done, which should never become more or less lenient from user story to user story. You can't negotiate time because the length of the sprint is fixed, and cost is determined by scope. So, the only thing you should really be negotiating is user story scope, which is covered by section 1 above.

1. As per my views, to manage overcapacity in User Stories, for addressing the user stories exceeding sprint capacity: a. Engage stakeholders to understand priority. b. Negotiate story scope and acceptance criteria. c. Align the story in the backlog for the next sprint based on priority. d. Be ready to pull it into the current sprint if capacity allows. 2. Negotiating User Stories: Negotiation involves discussions, primarily between developers and product owners, to ensure a shared understanding of requirements, estimate effort, and make necessary trade-offs & before the negotiation meeting, ensure everyone reviews the user story and acceptance criteria & developers should be familiar with technical aspects, challenges, and dependencies

Consider a user story about developing a payment feature for an e-commerce platform. The initial story might state, "As a user, I want to make payments easily." While the intention is clear, it lacks specificity and leaves room for ambiguity. Encourage the author to refine it by specifying details like preferred payment methods, security measures, and any specific user interfaces involved. A well-formed revision could be, "As a user, I want to securely make payments using credit cards, PayPal, and other major methods, with a streamlined checkout process featuring real-time transaction updates." This clarity ensures a more effective development process, allowing teams to precisely understand and implement the user's needs.

Rejecting a user story should be done tactfully and with clear communication. Understand the Story:Ensure you fully understand the user story and the reasons behind its inclusion. Document Reasons:Clearly document the reasons for rejection. This could include technical constraints,conflicting priorities,or lack of clarity. Communicate Clearly:Discuss your concerns with the relevant stakeholders or product owner. Offer Alternatives:If possible, suggest alternative solutions or compromises that might address the underlying needs without fully rejecting the user story. Collaborate:Work collaboratively with the team to find the best way forward. Sometimes,a rejected user story can be revisited with adjustments.

Rejecting a user story should only be considered after all other options have been discussed within the team and with the stakeholders. Rejecting a user story because of capacity is not a valid response when determining work effort. The only time a user story should be rejected is if it will cause major impacts or duplication of work. Even in that case, there needs to be lengthy discussions within the team to determine possible solutions to the problem. If the ROI for work within the team doesn't make business sense then it is acceptable to reject the story. As with any situation where work wont be completed communication is required with the stakeholders.

All the examples for reasons to reject a user story given here has nothing to do with a story exceeding the teams capacity. Silly AI.

Lets start with understanding the value of the story which will impact the business', and then prioritizing the story in the sprint. Sometimes the story seems simple but has a lot of work, in that case understand the entire workflow for the story and then if needed split the story and break it into chunks of work. Later get the estimation for each chunks and then as per team velocity run the sprint. It is important to understand the need of the story before making any decisions. It may leads to win-win condition for team and stakeholder.

Stretch Targets- accept the story as a stretch target whereby all stakeholders understand that this story may not get accomplished. Such stories should not be considered in the team KPIs (predictability, etc). In the event any committed story encounters an impediment, this stretched story can be picked up in the sprint.

In some cases, the team might have overestimated the story points for that particular user story. Reestimate the story points during the next refinement by reviewing the acceptance criteria amongst the team members. Breaking down the story could be another way to do so.

Split, defer, negociate, reject, ... these are just outcome of the given situation: you (the team) are asked to deliver something that surpasses the normal pace, so a sprint if we take velocity as a reference. What matters is to discuss and attempt to understand why this piece of product (user story) is so "big" to the team. Is it because of its uncertainty, the productivity of the team, the vision of product management, a mix of these ? Embrace the puzzle without much of built-in belief is in my opinion best you should do.

First prioritize the all stories and compensate the high priority story with low priority story if possible and move low priority stories to next sprint.