Yeah, it seems like it's fairly common for people/teams to follow the idea that any story that is 8 or more points should be broken down to tasks of 5 or less. This simply doesn't make sense to me. If the most simple task is 1 point, is your most complex task allowed really only 5 times as complex? Story points usually follow an exponential increase for a reason, enforcing staying in the mostly linear portion is just pretending the complexity and uncertainty has been decreased.
The idea is that if a task is that large can you really not break it down into smaller steps? Do we understand the problem well enough to implement or are we hand waving over likely areas of complexity? Maybe if you tried to break it down you'd realise that the 21 point card is actually more like 10+ 5 points tasks and you had just though "big" not "I know what needs to be done and can size this accurately".
Doesn't mean these cases never occur but it's worth seeing if it's actually smaller related pieces of work.
> Maybe if you tried to break it down you'd realise that the 21 point card is actually more like 10+ 5 points tasks
It didn't even occur to me think of it this way, because the times I've been exposed to breaking down tasks the total number of points stayed constant. 13 pointers becoming an 8 and a 5, and the 8 pointer becoming a 5 and a 3.
