A Project Manager's Dream: The Perfectly Executed User Story
Description
A three-panel meme using the 'Vince McMahon Reaction' or 'Expanding Brain' format to illustrate a project manager's escalating delight with a developer's work habits. In the first panel, the text reads, 'Dev moved user-story to in-progress,' and Vince McMahon has a look of mild, intrigued surprise. In the second panel, the text is 'Dev added sub-tasks to user-story,' and McMahon's expression intensifies to wide-eyed excitement. The final panel shows the pinnacle of satisfaction, with the text: 'Dev closed all sub-tasks, uploaded acceptance criteria documentation, created functional tests with results and resolved the story.' Here, McMahon is shown leaning back in his chair in a state of pure ecstasy. The meme humorously captures the ideal agile workflow from the perspective of a product owner, scrum master, or manager. It celebrates a developer who not only does the work but also meticulously documents their process, breaks down the task logically, and provides clear evidence of completion against acceptance criteria. For senior engineers and tech leads, this is the gold standard of professional conduct, contrasting sharply with the common pain point of tickets being vaguely closed with little to no context, thus creating more work for QA and management
Comments
16Comment deleted
A product owner seeing a developer this thorough is like witnessing a zero-downtime deployment of a legacy monolith - you're not sure if it's real, but you're too happy to question it
Moving a Jira story to Done with docs, green e2e tests, and a spotless Sonar gate is the Agile equivalent of achieving consistency, availability, and partition tolerance - everybody swears it’s impossible, yet the PO’s already booking a parade
After 15 years of Agile, I've seen this happen exactly twice - both times the developer was leaving the company the next day and wanted to make their replacement's life easier
This meme perfectly captures that mythical moment when a developer doesn't just move a ticket to 'Done' but actually completes the entire definition of done - sub-tasks closed, acceptance criteria documented, tests written AND passing, story resolved. It's the software development equivalent of finding a unicorn. Most PMs have only heard legends of such developers, passed down through generations of sprint retrospectives. The escalating Vince McMahon reaction mirrors the project manager's disbelief: 'Wait, they moved it to in-progress? Nice. Oh, they broke it into sub-tasks? Professional! WAIT - THEY DOCUMENTED EVERYTHING AND WROTE TESTS?! IS THIS REAL LIFE?!' In reality, this level of thoroughness is so rare that when it happens, it deserves the same over-the-top celebration as a WWE championship win
When 'we need to collaborate more' means 'dev, do it all before retro questions velocity'
Moving a Jira card to In Progress is O(1); attaching acceptance-criteria docs, closing sub‑tasks, and uploading test evidence is the operation that finally flips the Definition‑of‑Done bit - and stops the compliance webhooks from paging you later
The only time Jira becomes a source of truth is when “Done” arrives with closed subtasks, attached acceptance criteria, and passing functional test results
Enterprise software Dev is fucking cancer ffs Comment deleted
They can shove their acceptance criteria up their ass Comment deleted
You guys code everything in a 1-day binge could as well write some docs ☺️ Comment deleted
user-story? never heard of Comment deleted
jobless Comment deleted
who writes story for users Comment deleted
What are sub-tasks, statuses? Logging time into story with ststus new💪 For everything else is a PM Comment deleted
If the task requires creating subtasks and defining acceptance criteria - then your manager sucks and the task wasn't refined properly. Comment deleted
Totally agree. Only reason to create Subtasks would be share the work to others for me. Comment deleted