User Stories Overview

User StoriesOneAmerica BACoP

October 29, 2013

Copyright © Mountain Goat Software

As a <user role>, I want <goal>, So that <reason>.

Copyright © 2013, All Rights Reserved Development Block, LLC.

Agenda

• What is a user story?

• Why do we use user stories?

• What makes a good user story?

• How to split user stories

• Practice

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Incremental

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Calls for a fully formed idea at the beginning.

* Mona Lisa example taken from Jeff Patton’s presentation. http://www.agileproductdesign.com/

http://www.agileproductdesign.com


Woman in pastoral setting

Iterative

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* Mona Lisa example taken from Jeff Patton’s presentation. http://www.agileproductdesign.com/

Iterating allows you to move from vague idea to

realization.

http://www.agileproductdesign.com


What is a User Story?

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• Describe a problem or a desired goal from the perspective of a user.

• The 3 C’s

• Card

• Conversation

• Confirmation

As a <user role>, I want <goal>, So that <reason>.


Why User Stories?• Encourage conversations and shared

understanding

• Encourages incremental development, start vague, add more detail when needed

• Shifts the focus from features and functions to user problems and goals

• Avoids“that’s not what I wanted”“but that’s what the requirements said”

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Why User Stories?• I didn’t say she stole my money.

• I didn’t say she stole my money.






• I didn’t say she stole my money.��7


Good User Stories

• The text written on the card is less important than the conversations that we have.

• You should have to discuss a user story before it gets into a sprint...often multiple times.

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INVEST

• Independent

• Negotiable

• Valuable

• Estimable

• Small

• Testable

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Clear, Feasible, Testable• Clear

• Team has shared understanding

• Agreement on estimate is one indicator

• Feasible

• Can be completed in a sprint (ideally a few days)

• Don’t forget your Doneness Criteria

• Testable

• There is an effective way to determine if the functionality works as expected

• Acceptance Criteria is defined

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Examples

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Post ResumeLarry wants to post his resume on the job board so that recruiters and hiring managers will be able to f ind his resume in searches for open positions.

* Information from resume should be indexed in standard f ields * Larry should be able to manually enter his resume details. * Larry should be able to upload his resume in any standard

format and the system should extract the information for the appropriate f ields.


Examples

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View Suggested JobsLarry should be able to easily view jobs that match the information in his resume so that he can quickly f ind jobs for which he may be a good candidate.

* Jobs should be sorted with the best match at the top of the list * This list should be automatically displayed af ter Larry initially

completes his resume * This list should be accessible with a single click from both the

home page, the user’s prof ile, and the resume page


Splitting Stories

• The point is to get feedback...

• Must be demonstrable

• Needs to be a complete slice

• Still needs to meet Doneness Criteria

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Clues for Splitting

• Acceptance Criteria

• Variation/States

• User Role

• Complexity/Level of Detail

• Security/Permissions

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Richard Lawrence’s Patterns

• Workflow Steps

• Business Rule Variations

• Major Effort

• Simple/Complex

• Variations in Data

• Data Entry Method

• Defer Performance

• Operations (CRUD)

• Break Out a Spike��15


Practice

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Contact Info

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