TM-03
Story Summary Suggests a Technical Task or Infrastructure Work
Type Misclassification
Default severity: medium
Product BacklogPrioritizationQualityBusiness Value
What it detects
A Story or Feature has a summary suggesting infrastructure, DevOps, configuration, deployment, or technical maintenance work — not a user story. These items should be classified as Technical Tasks, Enablers, or Spikes, not user stories, as they carry no direct business value and should not count toward feature velocity.
Detection formula
tech_task_keywords = config.tm.tech_task_keywords // defaults (EN): \[\'deploy\', \'deployment\', \'configure\', \'configuration\', \'setup\', \'set up\', \'install\', \'migrate\', \'migration\', \'upgrade\', \'pipeline\', \'CI/CD\', \'infrastructure\', \'server\', \'database\', \'script\', \'automate\', \'monitoring\', \'logging\', \'environment\', \'certificate\', \'credentials\', \'access rights\', \'permissions\'\] // defaults (SK/CZ): \[\'nasadenie\', \'konfigurácia\', \'inštalácia\', \'migrácia\', \'infraštruktúra\', \'server\', \'databáza\', \'skript\', \'prostredie\', \'prístupové práva\'\] IF issue.type IN config.workflow.story_types AND summary MATCHES any(tech_task_keywords) THEN FLAG probable_tech_task Correlate with WD-03 (analysis logged as story) for combined content signalExamples in practice
- A team shows a story or feature has a summary suggesting infrastructure, devops, configuration, deployment, or technical maintenance work while tech task keywords is set to see 5l.2.
- Example signal: A Story or Feature has a summary suggesting infrastructure, DevOps, configuration, deployment, or technical maintenance work — not a user story.
Suggested response
Retype or rewrite summaries so issue types match the actual work described.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
A Story or Feature has a summary suggesting infrastructure, DevOps, configuration, deployment, or technical maintenance work — not a user story. These items should be classified as Technical Tasks, Enablers, or Spikes, not user stories, as they carry no direct business value and should not count toward feature velocity.
Why it matters
When "Story Summary Suggests a Technical Task or Infrastructure Work" keeps appearing, the team is signalling a repeatable process gap. Left unexamined, the pattern hides where work really stalls and makes improvement metrics harder to trust.
What you can achieve
Retype or rewrite summaries so issue types match the actual work described.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Story Summary Suggests a Technical Task or Infrastructure Work" from firing again?
- What do the cited issues have in common — same root cause or same workaround?
- Who owns the two-week experiment and how will we verify on the next import?
Run this rule against your own tracker data with Flow Analyzer.