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Last active December 14, 2015 16:48
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Few tips gathered through the Internet about wirting user stories
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user_stories.markdown

User stories writing guide

This quick tips would help you write better user stories, and group them in themes. As a quick reference here are a few examples

  • As a customer role, I want goal/desire so that benefit
  • As an admin, I want to send register invitations so that I can invite user lists from the old application
  • As a regular user I want to have a search bar in the top so that I can easily find what I am looking for
  • As a regular user I want to create and save playlists so that I can have my songs organized, and accesible

  1. Focus on the user: As its name suggests, a user story should tell a story about a customer or user employing the product. Write stories from the user’s perspective and employ user roles, such as corporate user, consumer, admin, marketer.

  2. The purpose of the user story: Use stories to facilitate a conversation with the team and with the users, the customers and the other stakeholders. A story is not a specification and it does not replace a dialogue. The opposite is true: Stories capture the essence of a conversation about how users interact with the product.

  3. Story writing is teamwork: The days of the lonesome product manager locked away in her room and racking her brain to come up with perfect requirements are over. Leverage the creativity and knowledge of the team and the stakeholders to discover great stories. Invite the team to detail the stories to get them ready for the next sprint planning meeting.

  4. Keep your stories simple and concise: Use language that is easy to understand. Avoid confusing and ambiguous terms and use active voice. Focus on what’s important, and leave out non-essential information. Simplify and prune your stories. A great way to keep your stories focussed is to use the following template: As a customer role, I want goal/desire so that benefit

  5. Progressively decompose your stories: Start with big, goal-oriented stories (epics), and derive small, detailed stories that are ready to be transformed into a product increment.

  6. Don’t forget the acceptance criteria: As you decompose epics into smaller stories, remember to add acceptance criteria. Acceptance criteria complement the story’s narrative, state when the story is complete, and ensure that it is testable.

  7. Consider grouping user stories into themes: Use themes to organise your stories. Each theme is a group of related stories. Sample themes for a mobile phone are email, calendar, voice communication, and organizer, for instance. Themes make it not only easier to check for completeness and consistency, they also structure your product backlog, aid prioritisation, and speed up accessing information.

  8. Keep the status of the user story updated: You should keep updated the status of the user story as (backlog/in-progress/delivered/accepted/rejected/finished/assigned to/etc.)

  9. Some things aren’t stories: Don’t feel obligated to describe every single aspect of the product as a user story. For instance, user interface design ideas are often best captured in form of paper sketches.

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