Keeping Stories Small

The most common mistake is stories that are too big. If describing a story takes more than a short paragraph, it's probably two stories.

Signs a Story Is Too Large

• It touches more than one page or section of the app

• It involves designing new components AND wiring up API calls AND adding validation logic

• You find it hard to describe a single clear success condition

• Implementing it would require multiple independent decisions that could each go a different way

When in Doubt, Split It

Stadium 8 handles small stories efficiently and can run many of them in parallel. Large ambiguous stories slow everything down and produce results that drift from what you had in mind.

Examples

Good story size	Too large
"A user can filter the product list by category"	"Build the checkout flow" (this is an epic)
"Show a loading spinner while the product list is fetching"	"The product page should work properly" (not a story, a goal)
"A user can see their past orders in a list, newest first"	"Add a dashboard" (needs breaking down into individual stories)