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Tasks that doesn't belong to a User Story

Last post 08:12 pm March 6, 2023 by Igor Lakic
4 replies
Haytham Hosny
05:01 pm March 2, 2023

Hi guys 

We are using Azure Devops for managing our board and we sometimes face this issue of needing to do a task which is not related to any of the listed user stories . currently the team creates a story in the sprint backlog and lists these tasks under it . i am just wondering if this is the best approach or can we have a better one ?

 

Thanks

Ian Mitchell
05:23 pm March 2, 2023

If it's work work needed to meet the Sprint Goal, you might organize it directly under that. If it isn't, you might just place it in the Sprint itself. A useful board helps to establish transparency over the truth.

Daniel Wilhite
06:07 pm March 2, 2023

If the current process works for the Scrum Team and gives necessary visibility to external stakeholders then it is the best approach.  You've may have heard the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  That is very good way to approach things in agile.

 

Lottiah Smith
07:32 pm March 2, 2023

Hi Haytham, 



The best process should be Stories - any task related to the story should be link in the parent ticket as a sub-task. Its okay to create task on its own in the backlog and bring them in the sprint if needed but it shouldn't be in a parent ticket if not related. Making sure the team understand the difference between Spikes, Story, Task, Bugs and Epics tickets are very important because they all represent different meanings. Hopefully this helps. 

Igor Lakic
07:43 am March 4, 2023

Definitely agree with previous speakers.

Do not limit yourself/team with using User stories only to do necessary work, rather use whatever suits your needs internally.

Have in mind that you have to have clearly stated, refined, understood and 'ready' items to be pulled into Sprint as a forecast to meet the Sprint goal.

Until you are building usable valuable Increments that meet DoD - you can use any issue type.

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