Extended Education

Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements

Effective User Stories for Agile Requirements

Projects start with their requirements. How those requirements are documented or expressed has a tremendous influence on the rest of the project. User stories originated in the agile processes but are useful even if you are not planning to use an agile process.

The technique of expressing requirements as user stories is one of the most broadly applicable techniques introduced by the agile processes. However, user stories are an effective approach on all time-constrained projects. In this course, we will look at how to identify and write good user stories. We’ll see the six attributes all good stories must exhibit and present thirteen guidelines for writing better stories. We will explore how user role modeling can help when gathering a project’s initial stories.

During this hands-on course we will have the opportunity to practice identifying user roles and writing stories on a case study.

You Will Learn

• The six attributes of a good story and how to achieve them
• A useful template for writing user stories
• Practical techniques for gathering user stories
• How much work to do up-front and how much to do just-in-time

Combine This Class With Other Training

This class will be preceeded by a Certified Scrum Product Owner class and followed by a Certified ScrumMaster class in the same location. You can attend each class separately or with this class.

What You Get

• High quality training from an industry expert
• A hot lunch buffet and afternoon biscuits
• A printed and bound copy of the course materials

Professional Development Units (PDUs)

PMPs: You can receive 8 PDUs for this course. 

Onsite

Don’t see a date and location you like? Want to train a team or department without the hassle of travel? This course is available for onsite delivery. Contact Mike Cohn at (720) 890-6110 or by e-mail at Contact Mike Cohn

Brochure

Download a PDF brochure with additional information.

• It's a communication problem
• What user stories are
  • Card, conversation, confirmation
  • Some examples
  • Adding detail
  • The product backlog iceberg
  • Augmenting user stories
• Users and user stories
  • Proxy bias
  • User roles
  • User role modeling
  • Personas
  • Extreme characters
• Gathering stories
  • Questionnaires
  • Observation
  • User interviews
  • Story-writing workshops
• INVEST in good stories
  • Independent
  • Negotiable
  • Valuable
  • estimatable
  • Sized Appropriately
  • Testable
  • Additional guidelines
• A tools interlude
• Created case studies
  • Creating and selecting case studies
  • Writing the product backlogs
  • Lessons Learned
• What user stories are not
  • Use cases
  • IEEE 830 Software Requirements Specs
• Why user stories
• Why not user stories

This course is equally suited for programmers, testers, managers, analysts and even customers and product owners who are interested in applying these agile techniques to their projects.