Create a group story

When you break a user story, the original story is converted into a group story. The parts you define while breaking a story are children of the group story.

Note: Breaking a user story is different than splitting a user story, which is only done between sprints.

  • Break a story when you have a large story that you want to divide into smaller pieces. After breaking, the group stories are visible only in the Group Stories view on the Product Backlog grid.
  • Split a story when you have not completed all its tasks and acceptance tests by the end of a sprint, and want to push the remaining items to the next sprint. For more details, see Split a user story.

Break a user story

Breaking a user story is useful for dividing a large user story into two or more smaller parts. You can postpone some of the new stories to later sprints or releases, and assign them to other features.

  1. In any of the backlog grids, right-click a user story, and click Break Story.
  2. In the Break Story dialog box, define new user stories that are the parts of the original user story. Assign story points for each new story.
  3. Click Finish. The new stories are added to the backlog.

Each new child story can also be broken into lower-level parts. You can navigate group stories and their children using the Group Stories View.

  • The new stories inherit the original story's tasks, acceptance tests, and entity links.

  • Story points assigned to the original user story are removed. The group story's story points are the total story points of its child stories.

    Note: After the story is broken, if the child stories' story points are changed, the group story's story points are not updated.

  • If the original story has attachments, the attachments are kept with the group story and are not copied to each child story.

Browse group stories

The Group Stories View enables you to view group stories and drill down to their children. You can also create new stories under a group story.

Open the Product Backlog > Backlog page, and click the Group Stories View link.

  • The Root level of the Group Stories View displays top level group stories, and user stories that are not children of a group story.
  • Click a link in the Children column to drill down to the user stories that constitute a group story.
  • Use the breadcrumb links to navigate to higher levels of the group story hierarchy.

In the User Story view, you can view the child stories. Each child story is linked to the parent group story (for user stories broken in March 2017 or later).