Invest criteria agile is an important concept in agile development. It refers to the core criteria that agile teams should follow when investing effort in developing user stories and features. There are 5 key invest criteria in agile methodology – Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable and Small(INVEST). Understanding these criteria helps teams maximize value delivery in each iteration. An agile team needs to ensure user stories meet the INVEST principles to enable effective planning, development and testing. Applying the invest criteria also aids in splitting larger stories into smaller ones while maintaining business value. Overall, invest criteria agile provides critical guidance for agile teams to iteratively build high-quality, customer-centric products.
Independent criteria enhances agile user stories
The Independent criteria states that agile user stories should be self-contained and not dependent on other stories. Teams should avoid creating user stories with inherent dependencies. Independent stories can be developed, tested and potentially released independently of other work. This modular approach makes planning and organizing work much easier. Independent stories also enable greater flexibility in prioritizing and sequencing delivery based on changing business needs. Creating tightly coupled stories leads to waterfall-style big bang integration which compromises agility. So agile teams must take care to isolate distinct user needs into independent stories during grooming sessions.
Negotiable principle drives collaboration in agile teams
The Negotiable criteria emphasizes that agile user stories are not explicit contracts but starting points for further conversations. The details of a story can be clarified and improved through ongoing team discussions. Stories must remain malleable to change during development as new learnings emerge. Rigid specifications decrease agility. The negotiable nature of stories encourages collaboration between cross-functional team members – product owners, developers, testers etc. This collaboration builds shared understanding and accountability towards delivering high-priority features. Negotiation also enables optimization of technical implementation details in ways that best deliver user value. Overall, the negotiable principle drives the continuous improvements and shared ownership fundamental to agile delivery.
Valuable criteria focuses agile teams on user needs
The Valuable criteria requires that agile user stories clearly express user or customer value. This guides teams to only work on features that address real user needs or business goals. Valuable stories act as checkpoints to ensure teams stay focused on solving meaningful problems versus low-value gold plating. Stories must articulate the user persona, their needs and why those needs are important. This understanding enables designers, developers and testers to build optimal user experiences. Valuable stories also facilitate effective prioritization and release planning. Product owners can assess and sequence high-value stories for early delivery versus nice-to-haves. In essence, the valuable criteria keeps agile teams laser focused on delivering the most impactful capabilities.
Estimatable principle enables accurate agile planning
The Estimatable criteria states that agile teams must be able to estimate the relative effort required to implement a user story. Teams estimate based on story points using techniques like t-shirt sizing or the Fibonacci sequence. Accurate estimates require clear, detailed stories and team knowledge/experience. Estimatable stories are vital for sprint planning and capacity based pull scheduling. Product owners can only commit to delivering an optimal set of stories based on reliable estimates. Teams should split large, complex stories that cannot be accurately sized. Overall, the estimatable criteria enables data-driven forecasting and tracking of a team’s velocity and productivity.
Small agile stories ease implementation and testing
The Small criteria recommends that agile user stories should be finely decomposed into thin vertical slices. Small stories can be completed within a sprint iteration. They simplify development and testing while enabling faster feedback loops. Large monolithic stories tend to cause integration headaches and quality issues. It is challenging to isolate defects in big bang deliverables. Small stories also provide flexibility in sequencing work based on emerging priorities. If a story cannot be split small enough for a sprint, it indicates potential scoping issues or hidden complexity. Teams gain experience over time in identifying well-sized vertical stories during backlog grooming and sprint planning.
The INVEST criteria are critical for agile teams to build the right products effectively. Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable and Small stories enable greater agility, quality and productivity versus traditional requirements. Applying INVEST principles during backlog refinement and sprint planning fundamentally improves a team’s delivery cadence and customer satisfaction.