Exercise 3: A Different Split of the Same Scope — Possible Solution ==================================================================== RESULTS ------------------------------ Original split [3, 3, 3, 2, 2] (sum=13): 9 points shipped New split [5, 4, 4] (sum=13): 9 points shipped Both splits happen to ship the same 9 points here - but the split itself, not just the point total, genuinely determines the outcome, as a further check reveals: [5, 4, 4] -> 9 points shipped [4, 4, 5] -> 8 points shipped (same three numbers, different order!) [4, 5, 4] -> 9 points shipped [6, 4, 3] -> 10 points shipped [7, 3, 3] -> 10 points shipped Reordering the identical multiset {4, 4, 5} from [5,4,4] to [4,4,5] drops the shipped total from 9 to 8 - the 5-point story never gets started at all in that order, because 4+4=8 leaves only 2 points of capacity remaining, not enough for the 5-point story, even though it would have fit perfectly as the FIRST or SECOND item taken. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ This reveals something the chapter's own single example didn't fully expose: "Small" isn't only about individual story size - the ORDER stories are pulled in interacts with size to determine how much capacity gets wasted at the boundary. A team that always pulls its largest remaining story first (a real, common backlog-ordering heuristic) would have avoided this exact trap - [5,4,4] and [7,3,3] and [6,4,3] all ship more than [4,4,5] specifically because a larger-first ordering leaves smaller, more flexible remainders to fill in the leftover capacity, rather than leaving one large story stranded at the end with too little room left for it.