Entire team should think on this and reply. Don't hesitate to dis-agree with me and feel-free to give your opinion.
Don't Take any story which is at the higher end of 3 points. ( when you think it is 3-4 or 3-5 pointer stories).
If one person thinks every story is 2 or 3 points which is okay. However, the rest of the members should think that one person is not going to code all the stories. Therefore, You should also think that you are going to code the story and do your estimation.
Keep in mind every use case has 3 part by default:
- Build Client
- Build Server
- Integrate
You should do a staggered deployment to QA. Deploy something on Thursday. An entire story by Next week Monday max to max if it is a 3 pointer. Otherwise by Friday if it is 2 pointers.
3 pointer stories which are higher 3 points above 3 points are mostly stories which we are not able to deliver or we end up working late night and delivery by WEDNESDAY. We should avoid these types of stories to reduce STRESS and LATE night work. And bad quality code.
Therefore, either you split those 3-4 or 3-5 point stories. While splitting whether it is testable or not testable that should not matter according to me. As far as development team can write TDD and develop the piece of work and deploy to QA. It should be okay. Finally when we do the Integration story that time Business can see and TEST.