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I'm just about to get to know Taiga.io which is a project management platform and provides a scrum task-board as well as a kanban user story board.

However: Since it seems to be very common to track the "tasks" of an sprint on the task board if using scrum. If using kanban, you can track the userstories on the board and tasks are nested within the US and not pinned at a board as well - so there is no visual "movement" of the concrete working tasks as i understand.

Im now wondering if it is okay to just write user stories like tasks as the example of taiga.io shows: Kanban us-board example

Scrum task-board example

(the user story ist not in the format like "As a , I want so that " but in a task description like "develop filereader" or "implement the db-sheme")

BartoszKP
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EchtFettigerKeks
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2 Answers2

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I would say that it's better not use user story (US) as task, and vice versa.

The reason is that US is usually used to describe the requirement. It's supposed to show the value to developers and answer the "WHY" question. So the format of US is like this: "As a ... I want ... so that ...".

On the other hand, task is usually used to answer the "HOW" question. When we look at a task we should be able to know what exactly to do. However it's not easy to see the real value from a single task. For example the value or benefit of "implement the db-sheme".

The Kanban and Scrum examples you showed illustrated the difference pretty well. For Scrum a US is something creates real customer value. Team uses tasks to make it happen. For Kanban it's more like a production line. The input for the team is usually already something doable, i.e., a concrete task. Therefor US is not that useful in Kanban.

Hope I answered you question.

Will
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You can write user stories as tasks, cause sometimes is needed for planning a technical implementation.

I dont know Taiga.io but, for example, in Attlasian Jira, you can create a US "As a user I want to send an email", which could have a subtask called "Create service for sending emails"

quindimildev
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  • So in your example it would be okay to write "create service for sending email" AS a user story at top level? For example: Everything what is a Team-Requirement (like "write documentation") can't descriped via a USER story. – EchtFettigerKeks Jan 13 '16 at 11:11
  • It is hard to answer for me. "Write documentation" is not a good idea if you are using Scrum, because writting doc is not use in this methodology. But, anyway, for me, it's ok to creating US with that name, only when It is not possible to attach them to a common US "As a user...". For example, "Install database dependencies" – quindimildev Jan 13 '16 at 12:27