user stories: stories for grown-ups

Stories for Grown-ups

Inspired by Mike Cohn and Kelly Waters – thank you

Fixed written requirements

‣ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

‣ Working software over comprehensive documentation

‣ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

‣ Responding to change over following a plan

Agile Values

Communications challenge

Collaboration

A continuum

User stories: an improvement

TimelineEpics &Stories

Stories &Tasks

Stories &Tasks

ImplementedStories

Getting to User Stories

Epics

‣ Compound epics

‣ Complex epics

‣ Placeholder story

‣ Way down the backlog

Now we can have user stories!

What is a user story?

A concise, written description of a piece of functionality that will be valuable to a

user (or owner) of the software.

‣ Discovered at planning stages

‣ Discovered during the project

‣ Continuously emerge/change and disappear

‣ For sizing the project and sprint

‣ For prioritising what to do next

‣ Monitored each sprint

‣ For the development team and owner

Stories are:

When

‣ Some are done at an initial planning stage

‣ Some are done later

‣ Continuously emerge/change and disappear

‣ Worked on throughout the project

Stories are for sizing

Stories are for prioritising

Stories are monitored

Stories are monitored

Stories are monitored

Stories are monitored

Stories are for the team and product owner

Stories have 3 parts

‣ Card: A description, Priority and Estimate

‣ Conversation: A section for capturing further information about the user story and details of conversations

‣ Confirmation: A section to convey what tests will be carried out to confirm the user story is complete and working as expected

Source: XP Magazine 8/30/01, Ron Jeffries.

“As a music lover

I want to submit payment by credit card

so that I can purchase the album ”

Card: The Description

Card

Card

A section for capturing further information about the user story and details of conversations

The Conversation

A section to convey what tests will be carried out to confirm the user story is complete

and working as expected

The Confirmation

6 attributes of a good user story

‣ Independent

‣ Negotiable

‣ Valuable to users or purchasers

‣ Estimatable

‣ Small

‣ Testable

Independent

Negotiable

Valuable

Estimatable

Small

Testable

A word of warning

‣ Don’t use stories in a sequential fixed process

‣ Don’t make a contract out of stories

‣ Don’t write stories in isolation

What next?

ChallengesTasksSpikes

Feedback

Still alive? Any questions?Still alive? Any questions?

douglas.talbot@gmail.comsandy@sprog.co.nz

Challenges

Iteration 0

Non-functional requirements

‣ The system will connect to the database through a connection pool

‣ We need to use Akamai caching

‣ The system shall be written in Java

‣ The system needs to be able to store 700 million records

‣ We need to set up a VISTA development box

Customer value?

Spikes