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How to manage stories that require development and testing over two sprints

David Hosking

Hi there,

I work in a govt department (sigh), and we're trying to follow scrum principles. Our problem comes in terms of the development and the test of a story. Because we have to get our story to a 'formal test environment' we're not able to both develop AND test a story in one sprint. I COULD create two stories (one for dev, and one for test), but I don't want to have to make changes in two places if the requirements of the story change. And the information in the story is relevant for testers and developers. I could create sub tasks, one for dev and the other for test, but then the story would move through 2 - 3 sprints before it's completed. I could also create two independent tasks and associate them to a story and move the tasks through the sprint, but then it's not going to automatically close/complete the story because there's only a relationship. In a perfect world, I'd create two sub-tasks for the story, and add them to the appropriate sprint (1st sprint dev, 2nd sprint test for that story) and then the story would close. But subtasks can't be managed in the backlog and sprints as far as I can tell, you can only move Tasks (top level), Stories or Issues. Anyone else had this issue or are you just lucky enough that you can dev and test a story in one sprint with two resources!?

Thanks!

Dave

Accepted answers

Jack Brickey

Your assessment is accurate. Here is my suggestion - create a story and link two tasks...

story = we need to deliver this feature

task1 = develop this feature, assign to sprint 1

task2 = test this feature, assign to sprint 2

optional - use automation to automatically create the test task once the feature task completes. Automation could automatically pull in the requirements and other details from either the story or the dev task.

All comments

Jack Brickey

Your assessment is accurate. Here is my suggestion - create a story and link two tasks...

story = we need to deliver this feature

task1 = develop this feature, assign to sprint 1

task2 = test this feature, assign to sprint 2

David Hosking

Thanks Jack,

That's exactly what we came to as well. So now we have 2 tasks for every single story and we can move them through the sprints. It just means that the related story remains in the backlog (even though in reality it's in progress) and we just move it through at the point of implementation.

We want all the comments and requirements etc against the story in case we need to make the changes. Otherwise we'd have to edit the content in 3 different objects. So our develop tasks are literally just 'shells' with links to the story. All that we record against the tasks are the titles which are are literally: [EPIC Name] - Develop Story ETP-392, [EPIC Name] - Test Story ETP-392 and linked to the story of course

Hopefully Atlassian wakes up to the fact that everyone (based on other forums) wants the ability to move through subtasks for a story independent of the story. With a nifty optional feature being that when all subtasks are closed (including Task: 'Implement Story xxx to Production), the story auto completes.

Thanks for your help...

Dave :-)

Jack Brickey

actually, I don't really need/want the ability to treat sub-tasks independent of stories across sprints. while I don't mind if they provide a means of doing this I would hope it is configurable because I wan't to run sprints at a story level. sub-tasks are just a way to breakdown my story into a to-do list. that said, I could elect to use my checklist addon which is arguable easier in many cases.

Aditya_77gcs2

I have similar question and trying to find a balance between creating a set of story(manageable within sprint) with a set of sub-tasks and tracking the feature and development stage in workflow.

For e.g. for a given feature, there are 2 options of story breakdown:

Option 1:

type feature = we need to deliver this feature

type story/sub-tasks = develop this feature, assign to sprint 1

type story/sub-tasks = test this feature, assign to sprint 2

The stories keep getting closed sprint by sprint but there is no tracking on the progress of requirement.

Option 2:

type feature = we need to deliver this feature

type story = development (it flows from sprint 1(for development) to sprint 2(for test))

individual sub-tasks for dev and test are closed based on the scope of sprint and stories assignment is rotated among developer and testers

This story is never closed till deployment but helps in tracking feature progress.

The question is how do we manage both aspects. Keep closing the stories within sprint(which requires multiple story creation) and also keep track of all development phases for the requirement.

Preetam Joshi

Hi Aditya, seeing this old thread... Well articulated the options. Did you choose on option.

I have precisely same dilemma so if anyone has found best practice can suggest.

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