Work item
Main work items
User story
A short, simple, and specific description of the value a product or service must provide to the end user, written from the user's perspective. User stories emerge from conversations between the team and the Product Owner to reach a shared understanding, and they serve as a reminder of what was agreed (see User story).
Technical story
Similar to a user story, but for functionality not directly visible to the end user: refactorings, implementing security measures, and performance or infrastructure improvements. A technical story is still a valid work item in the Sprint Backlog even if it does not deliver value directly perceptible to the customer.
Task
Work items smaller than stories. They are specific activities that must be completed to fulfill a story: writing code, designing an interface, testing, documenting. They are not estimated in story points but in time, and they do not appear in the Product Backlog but in the Sprint Backlog (see Task).
Epics: when a story is too big
When a story is too big and very poorly defined, it is called an epic. Epics are agile requirements, but they do not serve as work items: their size and vagueness make them impossible to estimate or break down reliably. They must be split into smaller stories before being brought into a sprint.
- Example: "Develop the new customer management system."
- Example of a derived story: "As a support agent, I want to search for a customer by tax ID so I can access their history in under 3 seconds."
When to break stories down into tasks
When getting started with Scrum, it is common to break stories down into tasks in order to see progress day by day. This is especially useful in teams with less experienced members, because it helps detect blockers before they affect the sprint.
However, as the team gains experience, breaking every story down into tasks can become tedious or lead to planning paralysis. If the developers can manage their work directly at the story level, requiring the breakdown becomes unnecessary micromanagement. The right level of granularity depends on the context and on the team's maturity.
Common mistake
Mistaking a technical story for a task. A technical story describes a valuable outcome for the system (even if it is not visible to the user): "The authentication system supports two-step authentication." A task is a step within the implementation of a story: "Configure the TOTP library." The distinction matters because technical stories are prioritized in the Product Backlog alongside user stories; tasks are internal to the sprint and do not compete for business prioritization.
Resources
📄 Scrum Master v.4.0 [in Spanish] — Section: agile measurement and estimationFree download · Scrum Manager
📄 Scrum Master en equipos con IA [Scrum Master in Teams with AI, in Spanish]Free download · Scrum Manager
See also
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