One of the most valuable skills a Scrum Team can develop is the ability to break down work effectively. It’s not just about managing the backlog—it’s about creating clarity, enabling flow, and delivering value sooner.
Let’s talk through how to move from broad ideas (Epics) to refined, Sprint-ready work (Stories) and finally to actionable Tasks—without losing alignment to the product goal or overwhelming the team.
🎯 Start With the Product Goal
Before anything hits your backlog, you need clarity on where you’re headed. If you are doing Scrum, the Product Goal acts as the long-term objective for the Scrum Team. It provides the context that helps guide decomposition: if the work doesn’t help advance the goal, why is it there?
Every Epic, Story, and Task should ideally trace back to this purpose.
🧱 Epics: The High-Level View
Epics represent large, customer-focused initiatives that are too big to complete in a single Sprint. The key here is recognizing that Epics are not meant to be 100% completed. Their value is in starting conversations, and keeping us focused on customer outcomes, not in being permanent backlog containers that require additional management overhead.
For example, you might decompose an epic into a dozen User Stories. If the first 4 User Stories get you 80%-90% of the value, stop there and move on to something else!
✅ Tip: Write Epics in terms of outcomes or customer problems.
Example: “Enable job seekers to apply with one click.”
🪓 Stories: Sprint-Sized Value
User Stories (or simply Product Backlog Items) should reflect a small slice of customer or stakeholder value—something meaningful the team can deliver within a Sprint.
A helpful guide here is the INVEST criteria:
- Independent – Can be delivered without depending on other items
- Negotiable – Flexible enough for team input and discussion
- Valuable – Clearly contributes to customer or stakeholder value
- Estimable – Understood well enough to forecast effort
- Small – Sized appropriately to complete within one Sprint
- Testable – Contains acceptance criteria or other conditions of satisfaction
A well-written Story should enable a conversation about outcomes, not just implementation.
✅ Tip: If your “story” still sounds like a technical spec (“login module”), you’re not creating valuable slices. Ask: Would a user actually care about this? One trick: could you describe it in a way that the first word of the description is a verb, from a user’s perspective? E.G. “Convert Currency from EUR to USD” or “Select account type”
🧰 Tasks: The How
Once a Story is selected for a Sprint, the team can break it down into Tasks. These are about execution—what needs to happen for the Story to meet the Definition of Done.
Tasks are optional in Scrum but often helpful, especially for newer teams or more complex work. They can be technical, design-related, or process-focused. Unlike Stories, Tasks typically don’t carry customer value on their own—they are the steps that realize the value.
Examples:
- Design UI wireframes
- Implement backend service
- Write automated tests
- Conduct peer review
This breakdown usually happens during Sprint Planning or shortly after.
🧭 A Few Principles I Coach Teams To Follow:
- If something can’t be completed within a Sprint, break it down. But still maintain the INVEST criteria. There is almost ALWAYS a smaller slice, you just need to look harder.
- Avoid decomposing too early—defer detail until it’s needed.
- Decomposition should involve the whole team. It’s a shared understanding exercise, not a documentation effort.
- Keep your backlog lean and focused. Don’t manage layers of hierarchy for the sake of structure—use what brings clarity.
- User Story Mapping is another great tool to help with decomposition.
Final Thought
Decomposition isn’t about managing work—it’s about enabling teams to focus, collaborate, and deliver meaningful outcomes. When done well, it helps teams build trust with stakeholders, improve forecasting, and reduce the stress of ambiguity.
If you’re looking to sharpen your Product Backlog practices and coach your teams more effectively, this is exactly the kind of topic we dive into during my Professional Scrum Product Backlog Management Skills classes.
🧠 Curious to learn more or want to talk about a specific challenge your team’s facing? Let’s connect.