Intelligent People. Uncommon Ideas.
11
Writing User Stories Effectively
(http://www.directi.com | http://wiki.directi.com | http://careers.directi.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike Noncommercial
By, Janeve George [email protected]
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Few Instruction
• It's a workshop not a presentation !!!
• Parking Lot
• Perks
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Overview
• What are User Stories?
• Some interesting BuzzWords
• The story of writing User Stories
• User role modeling
• Gathering User Stories
• Managing Epics and Tiny Stories
• Pros and Cons of User Stories
• User Stories gathering workshop
• References
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What are User Stories?
• It is the primary development artifact in XP/Agile development methodology
• High level requirements document
• Focuses on Who, What and Why of a feature and not How
• 3Cs of an User Story (coined by Ron Jeffries)– Card: A brief description– Conversation: Further information of the User Stories– Confirmation: Test to confirm completeness and
acceptance
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What are User Stories?
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What are User Stories?
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What are User Stories?
• A well-written User Story follows the INVEST model (coined by Bill Wake):– Independent– Negotiable– Valuable– Estimable– Small– Testable
• User stories can describe– Feature– Non-Functional Feature– Bug Fixes
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Some Interesting BuzzWords
• The Customer Team
• Epics
• Themes
• User Role Modeling
• Story Writing Workshop
• User Proxies
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Story of writing User Stories
Brainstorminginitial set ofUser Roles
Organize the set of
User Roles
Consolidate theset of
User Roles
Refine the set of
User Roles
Choose one User Role to start with
Refinedset of User Role
Write as manyCards as
possible for the User Role
Discuss and refine the set of
Cards
Refined set of User Stories
Prioritize for iteration
Compile a reliableset of
Confirmations
Pin down everyvaluable
Conversation
Step in process
Development Artifacts
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User Role Modeling
• User Roles– Various types of users
• Role Modeling– Brain storming– Organizing– Consolidating– Refining
• Personas– Imaginary representation of an User Role– Could use pictures too
• Extreme Characters
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Gathering User Stories
• User Interviews– Select right interviewees– Ask open-ended, context-free questions
• Questionares– Best if there is a large user population– When you need answers to specific questions
• Observation– Best fot In-House developments
• Story writing Workshops– Effective during the initial phase of the project / release
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Guidelines for good User Stories
• Start with Goal Stories
• Slicing the cake
• Write closed stories
• Size it for the Horizon
• “I as a (role) want (something), so that (benefit)”
• Colored cards
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Managing Epics and Tiny Stories
• Epics are too large to estimate and can be split into multiple stories
• Epics represents– Complex functionality– Placeholders for low priority stories
• Types of Epics– Compound Stories– Complex Stories
• Different ways to split Epics– Various small actions in the Epic– Along the boundaries of Data– Depending on complexity
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Managing Epics and Tiny Stories
• Tint stories are too short
• Its better to– Combine multiple tiny stories– Group them into Themes
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Creating User Stories
• Sequentially numbered
• Customer Focused– Written from a User's perspective– Better if written by the user– Avoid technical jargons
• Shouldn't be too short nor too long
• Should be complete and testable
• Should be able to implement by two people in a single iteration
• Avoid infrastructure, technology or service elements
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Pros and Cons of User Stories
Short and Easy to modify as in when requirements changes
Allow projects to be broken into small increments Easier to estimate the development effort Completed User stories can go for development It drives the creation of Acceptance tests Initial learning curve They require close customer contact Rely more on competent developers
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References
• User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn
• http://www.agile-software-development.com/search/label/user%20stories
• http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/vaibhav/good-user-story-invest
Intelligent People. Uncommon Ideas.
1818
Questions???
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Intelligent People. Uncommon Ideas.
1919
Online Library PortalA User Stories gathering workshop
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Intelligent People. Uncommon Ideas.
2020
Retrospective!!!
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