Level of Detail

User stories are an excellent vehicle for carrying items of customer or user value through the Scrum value-creation flow. However, if we have only one story size (the size that would comfortably fit within a short-duration sprint), it will be difficult to do higher-level planning and to reap the benefits of progressive refinement.

Small stories used at the sprint level are too small and too numerous to support higher-level product and release planning. At these levels we need fewer, less detailed, more abstract items. Otherwise, we’ll be mired in a swamp of mostly irrelevant detail. Imagine having 500 very small stories and being asked to provide an executive-level description of the proposed product to secure your funding. Or try to prioritize among those 500 really small items to define the next release.