From Concept to Action: How Do Agile Software Teams Decompose User Stories Into Tasks?

Abstract

In Agile software development, requirements are often captured as user stories (USs) and stored in issue tracking systems (ITS). These USs are typically manually decomposed into tasks that define the necessary steps for their implementation. This decomposition process, which serves as a bridge between requirements engineering and software development, is rarely studied in the existing literature, and empirical knowledge is scarce. We investigate how teams perform user story (US) decomposition in a mid-sized Dutch software development organization. Through content analysis and descriptive statistics, we analyze the decomposition of 373 USs into 1,823 tasks across 10 software systems developed with three different technologies (Java, .NET, and Power Apps). We provide empirical insights into the US decomposition process by examining which roles are involved, how they are involved, and which techniques are used. These findings can inform the development of tools to automate US decomposition and guide further research.