Some teams only work with stories, but it can be difficult for a team new to agile to write stories that are easy to understand and provide value every time. An alternative is to add epics and tasks. Understanding the differences between each level and knowing what size story to use for each situation will improve the accuracy of your sprint planning.

In this article, a developer shares his personal experience with the transition from a waterfall environment to an agile one. He compares what it was like for him coding, learning, and communicating using each methodology, and he shares what it was like making the change to agile—and why he's never looking back.

There are two practical goals for user stories: Each story should be beneficial to the business, and each story should represent a small piece of work. However, there is tension between these rules, and they often push in opposite directions. This article discusses how to keep stories small and tasks manageable, while ensuring they retain business value.

A good key indicator for measuring how well your agile team is performing is the burndown chart. It’s a simple concept—as time passes, the amount of work to do decreases. Of course, there will be days when progress is not as expected or tasks end up larger than originally estimated. A burndown can help your team reset and keep stakeholders in the loop.