ai-development-team-agent-pack/.ai/evolution/proposals/2026-06-03-backlog-status-vocabulary.md

Improvement Proposal — Backlog Status Vocabulary

Proposal ID

EVOLVE-20260603-001

Scope

upstream-candidate

Source Project

ai-development-team-agent-pack (Scrum Poker App — Sprints 1–3)

File To Update

• ./.ai/templates/user-story.md

Current Problem

The user-story template has no guidance on what values are valid for story status, and no convention for recording which sprint completed a story. Teams default to ad-hoc labels (Done, To Do, In Progress, etc.) that lose sprint traceability and make it hard to reconstruct what was delivered when.

Evidence

The Scrum Poker App backlog (./.ai/project/backlog.md) used Done (Sprint N) and Proposed organically across three sprints. When reviewing the backlog, sprint traceability was immediately readable from the status column. No equivalent guidance exists in the template.

Proposed Change

Add a Status Convention section to the user-story template, immediately after the Story/Acceptance Criteria fields:

## Status

Proposed | Ready | In Progress | Done (Sprint N) | Deferred

**Vocabulary:**
- `Proposed` — idea not yet approved by the Product Owner for planning.
- `Ready` — meets the Definition of Ready; approved for a sprint.
- `In Progress` — actively being worked in the current sprint.
- `Done (Sprint N)` — accepted by the Product Owner; record the sprint number for traceability.
- `Deferred` — intentionally postponed; record the reason in Notes.

Why This Generalizes

Any project using this template will produce backlogs. Consistent status vocabulary is a baseline need regardless of domain, technology, or team size. Capturing the sprint number at completion is low effort and pays off in retrospectives and audits.

Benefit

• Agents produce consistent backlog entries without inventing ad-hoc status labels.
• Sprint traceability is preserved at zero extra cost.
• Retrospectives and release notes can be generated from the backlog without disambiguation.

Risk

Low. This is additive guidance only. Existing stories using other labels are not invalidated.

Rollback Plan

Remove the Status Convention section from user-story.md. No other files are affected.

Validation

The convention is working when:

• New backlog entries consistently use one of the five defined statuses.
• Agents do not invent alternative labels.
• Sprint numbers appear in Done entries after each sprint.

Product Owner Approval

Approved

Promotion Decision

Promote upstream

Applied Date

2026-06-03

Baseline Version Impact

Patch