Stop creating tech stories
Does your backlog contain technical stories like migrations, upgrades, refactors, and other chores? Are you writing tasks instead of actual user stories? Let’s see why this is an antipattern.
I’m a fan of continuous codebase improvement through constant refactoring. I love coding and care a lot about all the codebases I work with. I understand migrations and upgrades need to happen, so why do I propose we stop creating technical stories? There’s a lot of harm in doing so. Let’s see why.
A tech-driven approach
What are you paid for? I often hear “to write code”. I don’t agree with that at all since I believe we’re paid to deliver useful functionality. Delivering value with a single line of code is much better than opening a 750-lines-pull-request devoid of value. “But I wrote so much code today!”. This is not about you or the dopamine rush you feel when looking at your flashy GitHub mosaic; this is about the users and the business.
As professionals, we need to understand that a software project is not about us and our egos […]. The Software Craftsman
