Where do User Stories Come From? Part 1. | Robert Galen An Approach for Generating User Stories I see many agile Product Owners struggle with backlogs on their own for new projects. Quite often they insist on personally owning the backlog-which equates to authoring every story themselves. While this approach certainly works, it does require a lot of additional vetting time with their teams-bringing them up to speed on the story content. In his book User Stories Applied, author Mike Cohn discussed the notion of User Story Writing Workshops. I see way too much individualized story writing and too little group-based activity, so I wanted to spend some time in my next two posts discussing the dynamics and merits of User Story Writing Workshops. Getting a Facilitator One of the most critical success factors in the workshop is finding or declaring a facilitator. If you can't get someone who's independent, then go for facilitative experience. The first thing the facilitator will do is coordinate workshop logistics. Workshop Logistics Wrapping-Up
Scrum Methodology & Agile Scrum Methodologies Use Cases or User Stories? Murali Krishna tells us: Failure to effectively transition to Agile development is often based on a fundamental failure to understand what a User Story is. The most important aspect of a User Story is that it's an independently *schedulable* unit of requirement (feature). The key to achieving the "independently schedulable" characteristic of a user story is that you express it in terms of how a "user" would use it. This leads you to a unit of functionality that's implemented end-to-end (UI to backend) that a user can actually interact with. Murali mirrors what many in the Agile community believe - that user stories are the only/best way to go and points us to an article by Mike Cohn, Advantages of User Stories for Requirements where Mike defines user stories: and then specifically contrasts user stories to the other well-known requirement technique, use cases: So it seems pretty clear that user stories are superior. Things aren't as clear cut as some would have us believe.
Scrum 3.0 and Organization 4.0 - impressions from a great evening with Boris Gloger at ImmobilienScout24 | On the agile path Today I had the opportunity to join a great and inspiring presentation by Boris Gloger talking about Scrum 3.0 and organization 4.0 (thanks to Immobilienscout24 for hosting a great event). With this post I provide a short summary of my notes and insights and links to further posts I already wrote about some topics presented today. Based on an initial blog post by Boris (DE) - we started today with a recap of the Scrum journey from Scrum 1.0, Scrum 2.0 and developed to today's Scrum status. Scrum 1.0 foundation by e.g. What did we learn? breaks between sprints don’t make senserole of PO was still a business analyst rolewhy 30 days and what does it mean - is it calendar days, what about Christmassprint planning and commitments did not work Scrum 2.0 roughly since 2004 - driving question, how could it really work? Scrum 3.0 ideas collected from the last 2-3 yearsall methods elaborated new best practices Product Owner Dailies NoMeetings One piece flow No estimates who still needs story point estimations?
Introduction to User Stories 1. Introduction to User Stories A good way to think about a user story is that it is a reminder to have a conversation with your customer (in XP, project stakeholders are called customers), which is another way to say it's a reminder to do some just-in-time analysis. In short, user stories are very slim and high-level requirements artifacts. 2. As you can see in Figure 1 user stories are small, much smaller than other usage requirement artifacts such as use cases or usage scenarios. Figure 1. Important considerations for writing user stories: Stakeholders write user stories. Figure 2. 2. Figure 3. 4. There are two areas where user stories affect the planning process on agile projects: Scheduling. Figure 4. 5. As you can see in the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) life cycle of Figure 5, there are several distinct "phases" or seasons in the life cycle (some people will refer to the agile delivery life cycle as a release rhythm). Inception. Figure 5. Figure 6. 6. Figure 7. 7. 8.
What powerful questions does Scrum help you answer? The video on powerful questions made me think about the deeper purpose of the various Scrum activities. Can I formulate Scrum as a series of Powerful Questions to be general enough, that they might be useful outside of software development? Here is the image I came up with and below are the questions I think each of the Scrum Activities and artefacts strives to help you answer. Sprint The Sprint is a container to limit ourselves to setting reasonable medium-term goals. Vision How will our efforts make the world a better place? Product Backlog What characteristics should our product have? Backlog Refinement What could we do to get us closer to our vision? Sprint Planning Part 1 - What is the best possible step forward, given what we know today? Daily Scrum What are our goals for the day? Sprint Review What have we accomplished or learned? Retrospective How can we work more effectively? Definition of Done How do we know a step was successful?
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Suggested Topics for Definition of Done Discussion Ken Schwaber and the rest of us advocate paying attention to what “done” means for a Product Backlog Item (PBIs, or “stories”). For a lot of programmers (like me), “done” often means “It works on my workstation!” The Scrum Master is charged with advocating a “done” that includes everything else needed to build a potentially-shippable product increment. So we need a cross-functional team. To avoid nasty surprises at the Sprint Review Meeting, I’d suggest initially attaching a definition of done to each PBI during the estimation process. If you’re using cards, write the definition of done on the cards. Scrum, a generalized framework rather than a defined process, doesn’t prescribe a particular definition of done. However, reading this may save you a couple iterations because the same kinds of things come up a lot. –mj Michael James Software Process Mentor Danube Technologies, Inc. For a general description of Scrum, see the Scrum Reference Card.
The Easy Way to Writing Good User Stories Many development shops have opted to writing user stories over traditional feature/requirement documents; however, almost all of them struggle when writing their first batch of user stories. This is not at all uncommon, just like riding a bike, it does take a little bit of practice (but once you get it – you get it). Writing user stories is dead simple if you follow these simple steps: 1. As a [role], I can [feature] so that [reason] When writing user stories, using this pattern is a for sure bullseye. As a account owner, I can check my balance online so that I can keep a daily balance 24 hours a day. Pretty easy right? As a account owner, I can check my balance online. Feel free to use slight deviations of this template using synonyms: As a [role], I want [feature] because [reason]As a [role], I can [feature]As a [role], I can [feature] so that [reason] 2. When creating new user stories, always hand write your new stories on a single side of a index card using a Sharpie marker. P.S. 3. 4.
Scrum Reference Card | Scrum Reference Card Print version A Management Framework Scrum is a management framework for incremental product development using one or more cross-functional, self-organizing teams of about seven people each. It provides a structure of roles, meetings, rules, and artifacts. Scrum uses fixed-length iterations, called Sprints, which are typically 1-2 weeks long (never more than 30 days). An Alternative to Waterfall Scrum’s incremental, iterative approach trades the traditional phases of “waterfall” development for the ability to develop a subset of high-value features first, incorporating feedback sooner. Figure 1. Figure 2: Scrum blends all development activities into each iteration, adapting to discovered realities at fixed intervals. The greatest potential benefit of Scrum is for complex work involving knowledge creation and collaboration, such as new product development. Doing Scrum, or Pretending to Do Scrum? Product Owner Scrum Development Team ScrumMaster Figure 3: Scrum flow Sprint Planning Meeting Lean
New to User Stories?Written for the Scrum Alliance. A CSP’s perspective on user stories, requirements, and use cases Having coached traditional requirements, use cases, user stories, and agile development, I’ve fielded a lot of questions around the differences among the three major ways of specifying requirements, particularly by people migrating to user stories. To set the record straight on requirements, use cases, and user stories, I will describe each methodology and then compare the three against each other. Traditional requirements Traditional requirements are criteria to which the system or business must adhere. They are usually created before the coding begins and are nearly always written as text. Good requirements have the following characteristics: Complete. Traditional requirements focus on system operation. Use Cases A use case is a series of interactions by the user (Actor) with the system and the response of the system. Use cases focus on interactions and are written in such a way as to succinctly define the user/system activities and data that define the interaction. User Stories
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives Hi guys, I want to use this post to introduce a topic I will discuss during next few weeks. Me and my colleague Ben Linders we are writing a pocket book about agile retrospectives. The title of this book is: “Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives“. The main target are: Agile coaches, scrum masters, project or product managers or facilitators who have at least some experience with doing agile retrospectives. Based on the previous information I want to use this blog to get a feedback from you. Below you can find some of the exercises that will be part of the book(Ben’s exercises are not here). In conclusion, I would like to ask you to leave as much feedback as possible so that I can improve the outcome of this book. In case you are interested in Agile Retrospectives I am at the moment preparing a 10 DAYS FREE AGILE RETROSPECTIVES PROGRAM. [hcshort id=”14″]