User Stories

Describing tasks to be done

Wouldn’t it be great if…

This is how a user story begins.

User stories are To-Do tasks with context.

User stories define the person’s role, their goal,
and the benefit, where the benefit is not clear.

AS A … [role]
I WANT … [goal]
SO THAT … [benefit]

eg. As a vacation traveller,
I want to see photos of the hotels

Additional Details

Details for a story may be added as conditions
of satisfaction, or as acceptance criteria.

Story Details Example

As a user I want to cancel a reservation

  • verify that a premium member can cancel same day with no fee
  • verify that a standard member is charged 10% for same day cancelation
  • verify that an email confirmation is sent
  • verify that the hotel is notified of any cancellation

User stories start in the Project Backlog
and then travel through the workflow.

Project Backlog -> Sprint Backlog -> Doing -> Testing -> Done

A Good User Story

  • Short
  • Clear
  • Conversation Starter
  • Describes functionality that will be of value to a user

ProTip #1

Not all stories need to be written in the same format.
Technical or constraint stories may need a different structure.

ProTip #2

The story text on the card is less important than
the conversations everyone has about the card.

Story Points

During planning, we give each story a number of story points
which try to estimate the effort required to complete it.

Story points help us to better plan what we can achieve each sprint.

Stakeholders have lots of ideas
They are not limited to 4-6 ideas per week
Every time something is delivered they will have new ideas
These cannot be allowed overload the team
Remember the teams capacity is 4-6 per week
Overloading causes
Multitasking, demotivation, interruptions

what do we build this week

Team weekly velocity is 4-6 stories
P.O. needs to work out which 4-6 stories should be built this week
A backlog is used to queue the stakeholder ideas
Called a Product Backlog
Over time can become large
Items can get ‘old’ in the queue
P.O needs to have authority to say NO!

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