Best Practices for Epic, Story & Subtasks management?

[Ninz Delfino]

Hello Atlassian Community!

I have 2 questions :

Example, let's say :

Epic : User Registration (we have 5 different types of users and redirects to different user dashboard after registration, also they have different fields upon registration,  plus, we also have verification process for each user types - that's why i put it into epic)

Story : As a UserA, i should be able to register in the app.  As a User B i should be able to register in the app. . . . and so on

Question 1 : Is it right that I put 5 different user stories for registration ? Considering that I have 5 different user types with different registration fields & redirections?

Question 2 : Now, how do i deal with UI, Frontend, API, DB & Mobile tasks? Should i put them as subtasks for each stories? So, that would be..

User Story : As a User A, i should be able to register in the app

Subtasks :

• Implement UI for registration form
• Implement frontend functionalities and to connect to API
• Create API for registration functionality
• Create user_table in mysql db
• Implement Android UI for registration form
• Implement Android registration function and connect to API
• Implement iOS UI for registration form
• Implement iOS registration function and connect to API

And, I have to re-create these subtasks 5 times for 5 user stories?

Your comments are really great help. I'll be so thankful for all of those


Cheers & Regards!

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello @Ninz Delfino ,

Thanks for reaching out and conceptually the answer is going to be fluid depending on what works best for your teams, and I recommend checking out the following blog as a first step that gives general guidelines to follow:

• Learn how to use Epics in Jira Software 

But a general recommendation for when to use an Epic should be based on:

WHEN SHOULD I CREATE AN EPIC?

Consider creating an epic if you have a large body of work that needs to be completed over several sprints or over a long period of time. You can also create an epic when you notice a pattern among several user stories, and you want to bundle them into one group. Check out our guide on Epics to learn about examples and templates.

So the registration Epic you noted is a good fit for this process, as it is spanning multiple sprints, embodying a large body of work, however, the following breakdowns of the work can be flushed out in a lot of different ways, particularly you noted "UserA", and "UserB" both have the same ask of "I should be able to register in the app" which basically duplicates the effort across two stories if the final result is the same for the outcome of the ask. 

So alternate approaches would be to either:

1. close out the second ask as a duplicate of the first so all work can be completed in a single location for the like sub-tasks
2. or link the original ask to additional stories as a blocked by, so each portion of the list you had as subtasks would be a Story with additional options for added sub-tasks that may be needed for each action

Also, with some additional info pulled from the document listed above I recommend you check out our guide on delivery vehicles to learn how agile teams gracefully manage scope and structure work. You can also reference the guide to working with issues in Jira Software.  As well as the blog posts How to manage a product backlog with ease and The product backlog: your ultimate to-do list.  These articles give a lot more recommended practices and approaches.

Hope this helps get you on the right track.

Regards,
Earl