User stories in agile, as the name suggests, aren’t agile by themselves: but they can be used to help follow agile principles. A typical user story in agile contains three main data points for example Who, What, and Why. It can be simplified as below.
–Please note user stories are always from the end user’s perspective.
As a website visitor
I want to subscribe to the mailing list for a product
so I can get product update through email
It’s easy to say that user stories are software system requirements, but they are not.
The most important part of agile software development is putting individuals first, and a user story puts end-users at the focal point of the discussion.
User stories in agile should be nontechnical in communication so that after reading the story the development team knows why they are building, what they’re building, and what value it creates.
What are user stories in Scrum
After being involved in numerous software development projects, agile experts recognize that SCRUM is one of the best agile development practices in use today. Core concepts of scrum include product backlogs, team roles, sprints, burndown charts, and more. The collection of all the user stories is called the product backlog. These User Stories are prioritized and taken into the Sprint Backlog in the Sprint Planning Meeting.
Product owners, Scrum masters, testers, software developers are the key elements for building a successful product, in any professional services organization.
One can always find some common questions about user stories
- How to write good user stories? –
- Who writes user stories in Scrum?
- Who will prioritize the user stories in Scrum?
How to write good user stories?
A User Story is like a building block for the software development team using the Agile Scrum framework of project management. A user story, a part of the product backlog, is a Scrum Artifact. Is there a set of guidelines to create a good user story? Bill Wake has prescribed using “INVEST” to write a compelling user story! Let’s understand in detail.
Who writes user stories in Scrum?
Product owner, product manager, or program manager – are responsible for writing user stories.
Who will prioritize the user stories in Scrum?
In scrum, the product owner is the one who holds a decision of prioritizing of the product backlog, but the development team has to decide how many of those prioritized stories they can work on in the upcoming sprint.
Why create user stories?
If we consider software development teams new to agile, it may seem that Users Stories can act as an added step. A common approach to look at this scenario can be let’s break the project into different series of tasks and complete it one by one.
User stories can provide a number of key benefits:
Storied helps in generating value: A simple To-Do list can keep your team focused on the tasks which need to be done. But the collection of user stories focuses on solving the problems of real users.
Solution Vs creative solution: to find a creative solution team members need to think critically and creatively at the same time. Stories help in achieving such solutions about how to best solve for an end goal.
Stories help in collaboration: When the end goal is defined clearly, your team can work together and can decide how best to serve the end-user and meet the deadline on time.
Stories build momentum: Because product owner prioritizes the list of tasks into small sub-tasks. The development team enjoys small wins. Thus momentum can be achieved within the team and it will help in overall project health.
How actual work is done with user stories?
Usually, a story is written by the product owner, product manager, or program manager and submitted for review. Once it is reviewed it is integrated into your workflow.
During a sprint or iteration planning meeting, the team members decide the stories they will tackle in the sprint. Then the discussion happens on the requirements and functionality.
Once agreed by teams then these requirements are added to the story.
Let’s not miss the prioritization of these user stories – another important part of this meeting is to score the stories based on their complexity and time to completion.
Is there any tool that can help in achieving agile scrum projects?
Well, it just so happens that we have spent the last 2 decades building such solutions for project managers, scrum masters, or product owners. With a lot of help from coders, design ninjas. The tool is called Whizible.
It helps you manage your products, projects, teams, releases, and so on. Whizible can help you know the project visibility, with intuitive dashboards and will always help you answer – of who is working on what?
Of course, you could use giant whiteboards, some note cards, and a bunch of different spreadsheets to track everything but we can agree to one thing that nobody loves siloed data for a single project or multiple projects.
We would like to discuss all your challenges in a call with our customer success team.
Conclusion
“Every Project is Successful If You Are Using Whizible”
