Sometimes, developers won’t be able to size a story because they don’t know enough about the technology required to implement the story. When this happens, create a spike story to research that technology. The purpose of a spike story is to size the other story, not to design the solution or research every nook and cranny. For example, “figure out if ‘send HTML email’ story should be split.” Or, more concisely, “spike ‘send HTML email.’” They’re called spike stories because you’ll often use a spike solution to do the research. But you don’t have to.
