Foundations of Agile Ticket Writing: A 4-Part Series

This is a multipart series covering the importance of ticket writing with examples using INVEST principles.

At Heady, we have managed dozens of products and hundreds of releases, creating value both for users and for our clients. It is not easy to coordinate these efforts, but diligence and clear communication allow us to deliver timely and valuable software consistently. One of our key tactics is robust ticket writing.

How does thoughtful and strategic ticket writing help our team at Heady stay on top of fast-moving projects? Let’s get into it.

It is easy to find articles about strategic product management skills, how to define product roadmaps, how to set your north star, storytelling, etc. Setting the strategic direction of a product is about 10% of the job; 90% of the job is delivering on that strategy. To effectively deliver on that strategy, you need to coordinate a product team by giving a clear direction.

To keep our projects moving at the speed of our clients and users, a Heady Product Manager must master the foundational skills of effective ticket writing, because it is the smallest unit of what a Product Manager needs to ultimately scale.

This includes:

• Defining product value
• Stating clear goals
• Getting implementation feedback from engineers
• Giving the team boundaries and success metrics
• Understanding and breaking down roadmaps into manageable pieces of work
• Shipping relevant software consistently

Let’s strip away the notion that ticket writing is filling out a template, and take a deep dive into the difference between a mediocre ticket and a rockstar ticket. By internalizing essential rules, you will be able to lean into your strengths as Product Manager. You can break the rules, once you master them.

So let’s start mastering ticket writing.

The first step is understanding what makes an effective ticket or user story. At Heady, we use agile INVEST principles.

In an ideal world, agile tickets should be:

• Independent — of other tickets
• Negotiable — not a specific contract for features. Engineers should provide input.
• Valuable — provide user and business value
• Estimable — include enough information to estimate
• Small — manageable enough unit of work
• Testable — a QA or PM can test the end result

With these principles in mind, let’s see how they translate into a new signup feature for our fictitious product.

VALUE Part 1 of 4

SMALL Part 2 of 4

INDEPENDENT & NEGOTIABLE 3 of 4

ESTIMABLE & TESTABLE 4 of 4