Disciplined Agile

Practice: Writing a Task

A task work item communicates the need to do some work within the project. Each team member creates tasks unique to the role. Tasks are posted on the project team board and updated in the daily coordination meeting.

There can be many kinds of tasks including:

  • Design task. Work that applies design patterns and coding principles and practices to specify code requirements.
  • Developer task. Work that generates code from analysis tasks.
  • Testing task. Work that defines validation and verification tests for stories and code.
  • Exploratory testing task. A suggesting that exploration testing be done to identify options.

Essential Attributes of Tasks

The essential attributes of a task are:

  • Description. A concise overview of the task to be completed. The title should be descriptive enough to allow the team to understand what area of the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • Estimate. Tasks must be “right-sized” so that a teamlet or individual team member can complete it in one to several days.
  • Exit Criteria. Every task must have an exit criteria so that the developer knows when the task is done.
  • Story. Where did the task come from?

Identifying Tasks From Stories

To identify tasks from stories, ask what it will take to do the following:

  • Define the functionality of the story.
  • Build the functionality.
  • Release the functionality.
  • Support the functionality.
  • Use the functionality.

May 2023