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User Stories — Who Decides What Goes in a Release?

publish date: 2026/06/04 22:55:37.816426 UTC

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In XP, once story cards have been developed and the development team has broken them into tasks and estimated the effort required, a key decision must be made about which stories to implement in the next release. Who makes this decision and on what basis?

The development team selects stories based on whichever tasks they estimate will take the least time

The project manager selects stories based on technical complexity, implementing the easiest ones first

An external steering committee reviews all story cards and selects stories based on regulatory compliance requirements

The customer prioritises the stories, choosing those that can deliver useful business support and that can be implemented in the available time — typically those deliverable in about two weeks

Correct Answer

The customer prioritises the stories, choosing those that can deliver useful business support and that can be implemented in the available time — typically those deliverable in about two weeks

Explanation

Once story cards have been developed and broken into tasks with effort estimates, the customer prioritises the stories for implementation, choosing those that can deliver useful business support. The intention is to identify functionality that can be implemented in about two weeks — when the next release of the system is made available to the customer. If requirements change, unimplemented stories may change or be discarded, and the customer decides whether new story cards should have priority over new functionality.

Reference

Software Engineering, Ian Sommerville, 9th edition

Quizzes you can take where this question appears

Exercises: Applied Agile Development