Using User Stories
Since learning about them some nine years ago, I’ve found User Stories to be much handier for expressing what the system should do than the monolithic requirements documents I dealt with in the past. User Stories have a number of advantages:
- They can easily be shuffled into a different order.
- You generally know (by the acceptance criteria) whether or not they’re done.
- They don’t contain a lot of duplicated or contradictory detail.
- The detail gets elaborated when it’s needed (rather than a long time prior, letting the details get out-of-date and/or forgotten).
I’ve created a two-page handout on writing and splitting User Stories. I’m publishing it here in case it helps others. And I would welcome any feedback on it.
Dave Nicolette wrote:
Very useful handout. I can see it helping many novice agile teams. Thanks for sharing!
Posted on 14-Sep-09 at 1:13 pm | Permalink
Tomi Juhola wrote:
Thanks a lot! Just what I needed for the upcoming story writing workshop :)
Posted on 15-Sep-09 at 12:35 am | Permalink
Ned Horvath wrote:
Thanks, I’ll make this available to my software engineering students!
Posted on 15-Sep-09 at 7:39 pm | Permalink
Tobias Mayer wrote:
Nice document George — who says documents aren’t useful! :-) I’ll be pointing students in this direction.
Posted on 11-Oct-09 at 4:05 pm | Permalink
Peter Boisvert wrote:
I’ve also found Gerard Meszaros Storyotypes idea to be pretty useful [http://storyotypespaper.gerardmeszaros.com/] and I think Dan Rawsthorne did some extending of the idea [http://www.sdexpo.ru/data/speakers_2007/dan_rawsthorne_storyotypes.pdf]. Also Alistair Cockburn’s brief summary relating use cases and user stories helpful (not entirely clear to me yet, but helpful) [http://alistair.cockburn.us/A+user+story+is+the+title+of+one+scenario+whereas+a+use+case+is+the+contents+of+multiple+scenarios]. Maybe some of these resources would be useful to users of the handout.
Posted on 27-Oct-09 at 10:53 am | Permalink
George Dinwiddie’s blog » Splitting User Stories wrote:
[…] written about User Stories before and made available a handout that includes a page on splitting stories that, in addition to […]
Posted on 01-May-11 at 5:54 am | Permalink
Bookmarks & New Favorites (09-38) : Practical Analyst wrote:
[…] Using User Stories by George Dinwiddie – List a few advantages of user stories, and includes a link to a helpful handout on “writing and splitting” user stories. […]
Posted on 23-Dec-14 at 11:15 am | Permalink