## 8.5 User Stories Breakdown User stories may be of different sizes during a project lifecycle. When a user story is about to be implemented, it **should be right-sized to facilitate estimation**, prioritisation and development within a reasonable time-frame (an iteration). But this is just one side of it. There are several other benefits that make this tool a very important one to master. - **Modular Implementation** – Working with ==smaller user stories helps improving design==. Improved design contributes to ==higher levels of maintainability and promotes easier scalability==. - **Easier response to change** – Smaller user stories means smaller changes, with less impact and easier to implement. Therefore, easier to incorporate. - **Risk Reduction** – Because smaller stories are simpler and ==easier to describe and demonstrate==, they help reducing one of the biggest risks in a project: uncertainty. - **Reduced Variability** – Because smaller stories are simpler and have less variability, they often do not delay delivery and travel faster through the implementation process (the System), reducing queues’ length. [[8.6 Definition of Done]]