Have you ever watched a novice cook attempt a complex recipe? There they stand, surrounded by whole cabbages and unpeeled potatoes, trying to cram everything into a single pot all at once. Chaos ensues — nothing cooks evenly, the pot keeps overflowing, and what should have been a smooth cooking process becomes a culinary nightmare.

This scenario might sound absurd in the kitchen, but it’s precisely what many teams do with their work items daily. They try to push massive, unwieldy epics and features through their delivery system, wondering why everything keeps getting stuck and nothing seems to cook… er, deliver on time.

The Temptation of Big Work Items

It’s easy to see why teams fall into this trap. On the surface, keeping work items large feels efficient. “Why chop the vegetables into small pieces when they all go into the same pot anyway?” But just as any chef will tell you that proper prep is crucial for a well-cooked meal, right-sizing work items is essential for smooth, predictable delivery.

The Problem with Oversized Work

When work items are too large, they’re like those whole vegetables in our soup — they create blockages, cook unevenly, and make it impossible to tell when anything will be ready. In the world of delivery, oversized work items lead to:

• Unpredictable delivery times
• Hidden dependencies
• Delayed feedback
• Stuck work and mounting frustration
• The dreaded “it’s almost done” syndrome that can drag on for weeks

The Art of Right-Sizing: Finding Your Sweet Spot

Here’s where things get interesting. Just as a chef knows the perfect size to cut each ingredient, successful teams learn to right-size their work items based on empirical data. They don’t rely on gut feel or arbitrary time boxes — they look at their historical performance and let the data guide them.

The 85th Percentile: Your Kitchen Timer

Think of the 85th percentile as a reliable kitchen timer. For small items like stories, we use it to set Service Level Expectations (SLEs) — “I am 85% sure this dish will be ready in the next 30 minutes.” But for larger items like epics and features, we use it differently. Instead of timing, we look at size:

• If 85% of your successfully completed epics contain five stories or fewer, that becomes your size limit for epics.
• If 85% of your features (the largest items) contain three epics or fewer, that’s your feature size limit.

While it’s common to have features smaller than epics, this client’s hierarchy reverses that convention, treating stories as the smallest items, epics as the next level up, and features as the largest. This isn’t about imposing arbitrary restrictions — it’s about using your team’s actual delivery history to find work sizes that consistently flow through your system. By aligning with proven team performance, rather than relying on hope or theory, you create a predictable and reliable delivery system — much like a chef who designs their kitchen workflow based on experience with what their team can consistently deliver well.

But What About…? Addressing Common Concerns

“But wait!” I hear you say. “Our work is different!” Let’s address some common pushback:

“We Need to Deliver the Whole Feature to See Value!”

Imagine telling a hungry family they can’t eat any soup until every single vegetable is perfectly cooked. Sounds silly, right? While the complete feature might deliver maximum value, breaking it down allows you to:

• Validate assumptions early — understand just how wrong you are!
• Uncover hidden dependencies — and address them before they become major issues
• Get feedback on parts of the solution — ensuring alignment with stakeholder expectations, needs and desires
• De-risk delivery through incremental progress — making the overall process more predictable
• Smoother integration and fewer surprises — avoiding last-minute integration headaches of the ‘big bang’ release

“Breaking Things Down Creates More Overhead!”

Yes, chopping vegetables takes time. But would you rather spend a few extra minutes of prep time or hours trying to fish out half-cooked whole potatoes from your soup? The upfront effort of right-sizing pays dividends in smoother delivery and fewer emergencies.

“Our Dependencies Are Too Complex to Break Down!”

Complex dependencies are precisely why you should break work down! It’s like untangling a knot — trying to pull it apart all at once makes it tighter, but carefully working on one strand at a time gets results.

“Won’t We Lose Sight of the Big Picture?”

Ah, the classic fear that breaking down work means breaking down vision. Think of it like planning a multi-course dinner party. Just because you’re preparing each dish in manageable steps doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten it’s all part of one cohesive meal. Tools like story mapping help you maintain that big-picture view, while right-sizing lets you adapt and adjust as you learn — just like a chef tasting and adjusting seasoning throughout the cooking process. Often, this approach leads to better outcomes than rigidly sticking to the original recipe.

Making Right-Sizing Work: Practical Tips

1. Start with Data: Review your historical performance. What size of work items flow smoothly through your system? Remember that right-sizing isn’t just about arbitrary decisions. Use the empirical limits you’ve set from analyzing your historical data (e.g., the 85th percentile of story, epic, or feature sizes) to guide your decisions and maintain predictability.

2. Use Visual Cues: If an epic or feature can’t fit on one sticky note without using microscopic writing, it’s probably too big.

3. Regular Check-ins: Make size reviews part of your planning process, just as a chef regularly checks their prep work. Use a Work Item Age chart in your daily standups to monitor the age of items in flight and right-size on demand if things are not flowing as expected (slice them up, right there and then).

4. Practice Incremental Thinking: Train yourself to spot natural break points in large pieces of work. Familiarise yourself with common slicing patterns, such as breaking work down by user functionality, data boundaries, or risk reduction. These patterns can help you create meaningful increments that still deliver value. By recognising and applying these patterns, you can right-size work more effectively and keep things moving.

5. Keep Your Recipe Card Visible: Have you ever noticed how professional kitchens have their mise en place laid out with every ingredient in its place but also keep the full recipe card in view? They never lose sight of the final dish while working with individual ingredients. Use tools like story mapping or epic boards the same way — they help your team understand how each carefully prepped “ingredient” (those right-sized pieces of work) contributes to the overall “dish” (your strategic goal). This keeps everyone cooking toward the same feast, even when focused on their individual prep work.

6. Find the Sweet Spot: Think of dicing vegetables — there’s a perfect size between “too chunky to cook properly” and “minced into oblivion.” Cut your pieces too large, and they’ll never cook through; dice them too fine, and you’ve wasted effort and lost the satisfying bite that makes the dish worth eating. Your work items need the same balance: small enough to flow smoothly through your system but substantial enough to deliver real value.

Conclusion: Keep the Kitchen Running Smooth

Right-sizing isn’t just about making work smaller — it’s about making it flow. When you find the right size for your work items, delivery becomes more predictable, risks become more manageable, and your team can focus on what they do best: delivering value.

Remember, you wouldn’t try to cook a whole cabbage in your soup. Don’t try to push oversized work items through your delivery system. Take the time to right-size your work, and watch your flow improve.

And hey, if you’re still unconvinced, try cooking that soup with whole vegetables. Sometimes, the best lessons come from experience — though I recommend sticking to right-sized chunks in this case!