11/15/2019 What is User Story?

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What is User Story?

In software development and product management, a user story is an informal,

What is User Story?
natural language description of one or more features of a software system. A user
Why User Stories? story is a tool used in Agile software development to capture a description of a
software feature from an end-user perspective. A user story describes the type of
Basic Concepts of User
user, what they want and why. A user story helps to create a simplified description
Story
of a requirement.
User Stories - INVEST
User stories are often recorded on index cards, on Post-it notes, or in project
Origins of User Stories management software. Depending on the project, user stories may be written by
various stakeholders such as clients, users, managers or development team
How to Write User
Stories? members.

Detailing User Stories

with 3Cs

How to Identify User

Story?

Lifecycle of a User Story

Organizing User Stories

with Story Map

Related Links

"User stories are part of an agile approach that helps shift the focus from writing
about requirements to talking about them. All agile user stories include a written
sentence or two and, more importantly, a series of conversations about the desired
functionality" - Mike Cohn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Cohn), a main
contributor to the invention of Scrum software development methodology

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 11/15/2019 What is User Story?

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Free Download (/download/)

Why User Stories?

Requirements always change as teams and customers learn more about the
system as the project progresses. It's not exactly realistic to expect project teams to
work off a static requirements list and then deliver functional software months
later.

With user story approach, we replace big upfront design with a "just enough"
approach. User stories reduce the time spent on writing exhaustive documentation
by emphasizing customer-centric conversations. Consequently, user stories allow
teams to deliver quality software more quickly, which is what customers prefer.
There are quite a few benefits for adopting user story approach in agile
development such as:

The simple and consistent format saves time when capturing and prioritizing
requirements while remaining versatile enough to be used on large and small
features alike.
Keep yourself expressing business value by delivering a product that the client
really needs
Avoid introducing detail too early that would prevent design options and
inappropriately lock developers into one solution.
Avoid the appearance of false completeness and clarity
Get to small enough chunks that invite negotiation and movement in the backlog
Leave the technical functions to the architect, developers, testers, and so on

Basic Concepts of User Story

A user story is a lightweight method for quickly capturing the "who", "what" and
"why" of a product requirement. In simple terms, user stories are stated ideas of
requirements that express what users need. User stories are brief, with each

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 11/15/2019 What isthan
element often containing fewer User10
Story?
or 15 words each. User stories are "to-do"
rials/) Support (/support/) lists that
Pricing help you determine
(/shop/) the steps along Request
Try Now (/download/) the project's
Demo path. They help ensure
(/demo/request.jsp)
(/) that your process, as well as the resulting product, will meet your requirements.

A user story is defined incrementally, in three stages:

The brief description of the need

The conversations that happen during backlog grooming and iteration planning
to solidify the details
The tests that confirm the story's satisfactory completion

And these, although, are known as the 3C's - Card, Conversation and Confirmation.
We will talk more about this later on in this user story guide.

User Stories - INVEST

The acronym INVEST helps to remember a widely accepted set of criteria, or
checklist, to assess the quality of a user story. If the story fails to meet one of these
criteria, the team may want to reword it, or even consider a rewrite (which often
translates into physically tearing up the old story card and writing a new one).

A good user story should be - INVEST:

Independent: Should be self-contained in a way that allows to be released

without depending on one another.
Negotiable: Only capture the essence of user's need, leaving room for
conversation. User story should not be written like contract.
Valuable: Delivers value to end user.
Estimable: User stories have to able to be estimated so it can be properly
prioritized and fit into sprints.
Small: A user story is a small chunk of work that allows it to be completed in
about 3 to 4 days.
Testable: A user story has to be confirmed via pre-written acceptance criteria.

Origins of User Stories

First mention in Kent Beck's book "Extreme Programming Explained". It was
unstructured text that was quite similar to use cases with restriction in size.
Ron Jeffries (https://ronjeffries.com/) introduced the concepts of 3C's: card,
conversation, confirmation
(https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/expcardconversationconfirmation/) in
2001
2003: the INVEST checklist for quickly evaluating user stories originates in an
article written by Bill Wake, which also repurposed the acronym SMART (Specific,
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 11/15/2019 Measurable, Achievable,What is UserTime-boxed)
Relevant, Story? for tasks resulting from the
rials/) Support (/support/) technical
Pricing decomposition
(/shop/) Try Now of user stories.
(/download/) Request Demo (/demo/request.jsp)
(/) 2004: the INVEST acronym is among the techniques recommended in Mike
Cohn's "User Stories applied".

How to Write User Stories?

When getting started with writing user stories, a template can help ensure that you
don't inadvertently start writing technical tasks:

User Story Template

User stories only capture the essential elements of a requirement:

Who it is for?
What it expects from the system?
Why it is important (optional?)?

Here is a simple format of user story used by 70% of practitioners:

Role - The user should be an actual human who interacts with the system.

Be as specific as possible
The development team is NOT a user

Action - The behavior of the system should be written as an action.

Usually unique for each User Story

The "system" is implied and does not get written in the story
Active voice, not passive voice ("I can be notified")

Benefits - The benefit should be a real-world result that is non-functional or

external to the system.

Many stories may share the same benefit statement.

The benefit may be for other users or customers, not just for the user in the
story.
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Notes:

User stories are written in everyday language and describe a specific goal (what)
from the perspective of an individual (who) along with the reason (why) he/she
wants it.

In software development, the goal is often a new product feature, the individual is
some type of end-user and the reason is the benefit that the user sees in the
targeted product feature.

User Story Examples:

As a [customer], I want [shopping cart feature] so that [I can easily purchase
items online].
As an [manager], I want to [generate a report] so that [I can understand which
departments need more resources].
As a [customer], I want to [receive an SMS when the item is arrived] so that [I
can go pick it up right away]

In the examples above:

Role represents the person, system, subsystem or any entity else who will
interact with the system to be implemented to achieve a goal. He or she will gain
values by interacting with the system.
Action represents a user's expectation that can be accomplished through
interacting with the system.
Benefits represents the value behind the interaction with the system.

It is not a rule but a guideline that helps you think about a user story by
considering the followings:

The user story will bring value to someone or certain party (e.g. customers).
The user story is fulfilling a user's need (e.g. receive an SMS when the item is
arrived) 
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 11/15/2019 What is
There is a reason to support User Story?
implementing this user story (e.g. customer can go
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Detailing User Stories with 3Cs (Card, Conversation and

Confirmation)
Ron Jeffries, another of the creators of XP, described what has become our favorite
way to think about user stories. A User Story has three primary components, each
of which begin with the letter 'C': Card, Conversation, and Confirmation to describe
the three elements of a user story. Where:

Card
Card represents 2-3 sentences used to describe the intent of the story that can be
considered as an invitation to conversation. The card serves as a memorable token,
which summarizes intent and represents a more detailed requirement, whose
details remain to be determined.

You don't have to have all of the Product Backlog Items written out perfectly "up
front", before you bring them to the team. It acknowledges that the customer and
the team will be discovering the underlying business/system needed as they are
working on it. This discovery occurs through conversation and collaboration
around user stories. The Card is usually follows the format similar to the one
below:

As a (role) of the product, I can (do action) so that I can obtain (some benefits /
value)

Note:

The written text, the invitation to a conversation, must address the "who (role)",
"what (action)" and "why (benefits)" of the story.

Conversation
Conversation represents a discussion between the target users, team, product
owner, and other stakeholders, which is necessary to determine the more detailed
behavior required to implement the intent. In other words, the card also
represents a "promise for a conversation" about the intent.
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 11/15/2019 What is User
The collaborative conversation Story? by the Product Owner which involves
facilitated
rials/) Support (/support/) all stakeholders
Pricing (/shop/) andNow
Try the team.
(/download/) Request Demo (/demo/request.jsp)
(/) The conversation is where the real value of the story lies and the written Card
should be adjusted to reflect the current shared understanding of this
conversation.
This conversation is mostly verbal but most often supported by documentation
and ideally automated tests of various sorts (e.g. Acceptance Tests).

Confirmation
Confirmation represents the Acceptance Test, which is how the customer or
product owner will confirm that the story has been implemented to their
satisfaction. In other words, Confirmation represents the conditions of satisfaction
that will be applied to determine whether or not the story fulfills the intent as well
as the more detailed requirements.

The Product Owner must confirm that the story is complete before it can be
considered "done"
The team and the Product Owner check the "doneness" of each story in light of
the Team's current definition of "done"
Specific acceptance criteria that is different from the current definition of "done"
can be established for individual stories, but the current criteria must be well
understood and agreed to by the Team. All associated acceptance tests should
be in a passing state.

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How to Identify User Story?

User stories should be identified together with the stakeholders, preferably
through a face-to-face meeting. User story is a requirement discovery process
instead of an upfront requirement analysis process.

In the traditional requirements capturing approaches, system analyst tries to

understand customers' needs and then prepare a requirement specification for the
system in detail. This is not how the user story approach works. Instead of a
documentation process, the identification of user story is more like a note taking
process. We list the major steps for identifying user stories as following:

1. Through the discussions with users, we listen to and understand

their problems and needs
2. And then, write down their needs as user stories at the same time.
3. These user stories will become the source of requirements.
4. The details could be subsequently filled just-in-time, providing the
team with a "just-enough" requirement references throughout the
project development process.

Lifecycle of a User Story

In a broad sense, there are six main states for each user story throughout a
software project:

Pending
Through the communication between user and project team, user stories are
found. At this state, the user stories have nothing more than a short description of
user's need. There is no detailed discussion of requirements, no system logic and

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 11/15/2019 What
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User purpose
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To-do
Through a discussion between different stakeholders, the user stories to be
addressed in the next few weeks are decided, and are put into a time-box called a
sprint. Such user stories are said to be in the to-do state. No detailed discussion
has yet been carried out in this state.

Discussing
When a user story is in the Discussing state, the end user will communicate to the
development team in confirming the requirements as well as to define the
acceptance criteria. Development team will write down the requirements or any
decisions as conversation notes. UX specialist may create wireframes or
storyboards to let user preview the proposed features in visual mock-ups, and to
feel it. This process is known as user experience design (UX design).

Developing
After the requirements are clarified, the development team will design and
implement the features to fulfill user's requests.

Confirming
Upon the development team has implemented a user story, the user story will be
confirmed by the end user. He/she will be given access to the testing environment
or a semi-complete software product (sometimes known as an alpha version) for
confirming the feature. Confirmation will be performed based on the confirmation
items written when detailing the user story. Until the confirmation is done, the user
story is said to be in the Confirming state.

Finished
Finally, the feature is confirmed to be done, the user story is considered in the
Finished state. Typically, this is the end of the user story. If user has a new
requirement, either it is about a new feature, or it is an enhancement of the
finished user story, the team would create a new user story for the next iteration.

Organizing User Stories with Story Map

User stories is a useful way to build a better product backlog, one that is user-
centric and describes software requirements in a practical, actionable way. But
user stories on their own do not reveal the whole picture that can clue you in on
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 11/15/2019 the larger journey the userWhat
goesisthrough
User Story?
from the moment that load an app until
rials/) Support (/support/) they reach
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A user story map can help us to arrange user stories into a manageable model for
plan, understand and organize the functionality of the system systematically. By
manipulating the structure of the map, we can identify holes and omissions in your
backlog and interrelating the user stories in a meaning structure; helping plan
holistic releases effectively that deliver value to users and business with each
release. User story map allows you to add a second dimension to your backlog.
Here are a few reasons you should consider using this technique:

It allows you to see the big picture in your backlog.

It gives you a better tool for making decisions about grooming and prioritizing
your backlog.
It promotes silent brainstorming and a collaborative approach to generating
your user stories.
It encourages an iterative development approach where your early deliveries
validate your architecture and solution.
It is a great visual alternative to traditional project plans.
It is a useful model for discussing and managing scope.
Allows you to visualize dimensional planning and real options for your
project/product.

User Story Map Template

Story mapping is a top-down approach of requirement gathering and is
represented as a tree. Story mapping starts from user activities. A user activity
should achieved a particular goals. And to complete an activity, users needs to
perform the associated tasks. And these tasks can be transformed into epics and
user stories for software development. Typically, user story map consists of 3
levels: User Activities / User Tasks / User Stories. For enterprise scale projects,
perhaps a 4 levels structure may be more appropriate by introduce Epics in the
third level.

User Activities - They are laid out in the second column. This are major objectives
that the system must support, with tangible business outcome. The entire row
forms the backbone.

User Tasks - Each of the user activities is broke down into a set of related user
tasks called narrative flow. The entire row forms the walking skeleton)

Epics / user stories - Each of the user tasks is broken down into Epics / User Stories
underneath directly the user task that the feature realizes. Depending on the
complexity of your projects, your team may choose the 3 or 4 level of story map
which is more appropriate to you as mentioned above.
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Visual Paradigm Story Map (/features/agile-user-story-mapping-tool/#user-story-
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3 and Request
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to cope wide variety type
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3 Level Story Map (User Activates > User Tasks > User
Stories)

4 Level Story Map (User Activates > User Tasks > Epics >
User Stories)

Planning for Releases

Use a separator to identify slices of tasks that users might use your software for to
reach their goals. The smallest number of tasks that allow your specific target users
to reach their goal compose a viable product release as shown in the Figure below:

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 11/15/2019 What is User Story?

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 If you want to develop a story map like this one, please check Visual Paradigm's
story mapping tool (/features/agile-user-story-mapping-tool).

How to Use User Story Effectively?

Just like many other software development methodologies, if you apply user story
properly in your software project you will be able to produce a quality software
system plus to win the trust and satisfaction from customers. Here are some points
that you need to keep in mind when using user story:

Keep the description of user story short.

Think from end user's point of view when writing a user story.
Confirmation items must be defined before you start the development
Estimate the user story before implementation to ensure the workload of your
team is under control.
Requirements are found with the end users, not by the end user or just by the
development team. Keeping a good relationship with the end users will be a win-
win situation for both parties.
Communication is always important in understanding what the end user wants.

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