INVESTcriteria
INVEST criteria is an Agile framework for evaluating user stories. Coined by Bill Wake in 2003, it defines six properties that help ensure stories are clear, actionable, and valuable: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.
- Independent: A story should be self-contained and free from hard dependencies on other stories, enabling flexible
- Negotiable: A story is not a contract; details are discussed and refined through collaboration between the
- Valuable: The story should deliver clear value to users, customers, or the business.
- Estimable: The team has enough information to estimate the effort involved, even if the estimate is
- Small: Stories should be small enough to complete within a single sprint; if not, they should be
- Testable: There should be a clear way to verify that the story is done, typically via acceptance
Teams use INVEST during backlog refinement to identify gaps and break large items into smaller, independent
Example of a well-formed story: As a registered user, I want to reset my password so I
Bad examples tend to be vague or overextended, such as “User can manage accounts,” which risks ambiguity
See also: Agile, user story, acceptance criteria, Definition of Ready.