Architecturally Significant Story

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Definition of Architecturally Significant Story

A Functional Story that causes the Team to make one or more architectural decisions, which is then validated by the fact that there is existing, working functionality using the decisions.

See:

Functional Story, A Story that produces working code that has actual, demonstrable user value. A Functional Story’s Acceptance Criteria usually consists of a single Acceptance Test, and verifying that the Test passes...
Architecture  The collection of decisions about how a system will be built – from Grady Booch in the early 80’s.

Examples

[Discussing types of stories] ‘Get a list of available Flights from CUTLASS,’ – an Architecturally Significant Story because it causes the Team to decide how to interface with CUTLASS (assuming this is the first Story that does so).

External Sources

5 Prioritization Factors

Cite This Term

"Architecturally Significant Story" ScrumDictionary.com. Accessed Jul 18, 2025. https://scrumdictionary.com/term/architecturally-significant-story/.