Guide for Splitting User Stories

Why is Splitting User Stories Important?
Splitting user stories is an important aspect of Agile project management because it ensures that work is manageable and deliverable within a specific iteration. It helps with prioritizing, avoids excessive complexity, and ensures better visibility, understanding, and control of the project.

What is Splitting User Stories?
Splitting user stories involve breaking down larger user stories, often referred to as epics, into smaller, manageable pieces that can be completed within a sprint. The result is a set of child user stories each representing an independently deliverable piece of functionality.

How does Splitting User Stories work?
Splitting user stories includes strategies like breaking down by operations, by workflow, by data, or by business rule. The goal is to create user stories small enough to be estimated and taken into a sprint for development.

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Splitting User Stories on the PMI-ACP Exam
For the PMI-ACP exam, remember that each split story should provide value on its own, be testable, and be sized to be completed in a single sprint. In the exam, pay special attention to INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small, and Testable) for splitting user stories. Also, familiarize yourself with common splitting patterns like breaking down by workflow steps, business rule variations, data variations or operations and how they can be applied in different project scenarios.