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Vivify Scrum Practices and Conventions

Vivify Scrum uses some non-standard terminology (e.g., it does not use the term “acceptance criteria” or “definition of done” but does have “checklists”) and allows some non-standard practices (e.g., tasks can have checklists). To use standard practices and avoid any confusion, you must use the following practices and comply with the following conventions.

  1. Each sprintable backlog item must be have an “item type” of “Story”.
  2. Every sprintable backlog item must have a single “Checklist” containing the acceptance criteria.
  3. Most sprintable backlog items should have “SUBITEMS”.
  4. Every “SUBITEM” must have an “item type” of “Task”.
  5. A “Task” must not have a checklist. (A “Task” should be small so a “Checklist” would not provide any additional useful information.)
  6. The team must have an “Assignee” for every “Task”.
  7. Stories must not have “Assignees” (since the individual tasks do).
  8. The team member that is the “Assignee” on a “Task” must mark it as “Done” when it is completed.
  9. The team must have a “Reviewer” for every “Story”.
  10. Tasks must not have “Reviewers” (because they will be reviewed by the reviewer for the story).
  11. Epics can (and should) be included in the product backlog. Since there is no specific item type for epics, they must be classified as “Story”.
  12. Since Vivify Scrum does not allow multiple levels of “drill-down”, when an epic is decomposed into sprintable stories it must be removed from the product backlog.

Help is available on the using VivifyScrum page .