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. 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 A good user story uses the “INVEST” model: Independent. User story–writing process Conclusion
Design Thinking With Persona 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. 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. User stories are suppose to be short and sweet. P.S. 3.
Personas Website designers often use personas to insure the design will meet users' needs. "A persona is a character sketch that represents a particular segment of the target audience," according to Steve Mulder, author of The User is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. "With personas website designers can focus on how the website will be used instead of how the technology should work. Instead of asking how a feature should work, the designer can ask, 'What would Francis do?'" Seven personas were developed to inform the Library Website Redesign. For those interested, the detailed personas are below: Name: AdeebAge: 20Location: Stanford campus - Toyon Hall (undergrad housing)Job Title: SophomoreWhat types of activities do they do online: Social sites, gaming, movies/music, Google Scholar for research. Find primary sources (pictures from the archives, manuscript - original item); use advanced searchFinds out how many books she has out and when they are due.
User stories in VS2010 MSDN Library Design Tools Development Tools and Languages Mobile and Embedded Development Online Services patterns & practices Servers and Enterprise Development Web Development This topic has not yet been rated - Rate this topic User story (Agile) Other Versions This topic has been merged with its parent, Agile process template work item types and workflow. Did you find this helpful? Tell us more... (1500 characters remaining) Thank you for your feedback Show: © 2014 Microsoft.
DIY User Personas | UX Lady Probably you already know what a persona is –if don’t check this -, and probably you, like me, build your first persona using some of the thousands personas layout you can find in the internet. But as has happened to me you’ve probably also discovered this is not easy work… But you know, I love recipes, so here you have my own recipe to build user personas, step by step including 10 elements your persona should have. I create this guideline with the purpose to make the process of create personas a simple fill in the blank work, so I think could be useful for you too. The guideline it is structured in 3 points: How to, with the step by step guide and the Interviews process.Layout, presenting the persona layout I use with 10 basic elements.Elements were I describe in details each one of the elements of the layout and the method used to obtain the information and measuring. Each point follows a What? 1.1 Step by step (Modeling personas) What? A persona should include: Why? How? 3.1 Profile: Why ?
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. 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. During JIT analysis/model storming with stakeholders. Figure 7. 7. 8. Translations Japanese
Personas: The Foundation of a Great User Experience Today's consumers are demanding more from companies. Customers expect products, services, and information that are timely and catered to their specific needs and desires. Traditionally, companies develop and market products based on market segmentation and demographics, assuming that the features, functionality and messaging will meet the needs of all of the customers in that demographic—a "one size fits all" mentality. "What Is a Persona? A persona represents a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral patterns in their purchasing decisions, use of technology or products, customer service preferences, lifestyle choices, and the like. How Are Personas Built? Personas are built by first conducting one-on-one interviews with a wide demographic of the targeted audience(s). Analysis is then conducted on the research data over the course of one to two weeks. From here, it's essential to launch another round of research. Where Does Persona Development Begin?
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. 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: Each user story is composed of three aspects: Written description of the story, used for planning and as a reminder Conversations about the story that serve to flesh out the details of the story Tests that convey and document details that can be used to determine when a story is complete So it seems pretty clear that user stories are superior.
Design thinking Design thinking stands for design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing.[1] Overview[edit] Design thinking has come to be defined as combining empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality in analyzing and fitting various solutions to the problem context.[2] According to Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, the goal of Design Thinking is "matching people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and viable as a business strategy" [3] The premise of teaching Design Thinking is that by knowing about how designers approach problems and the methods which they use to ideate, select and execute solutions, individuals and businesses will be better able to improve their own problem solving processes and take innovation to a higher level. Origins of the term[edit] (For a detailed evolution, see History, below.) Solution-based thinking[edit] Bryan Lawson Architects vs. Lawson found that:
INVEST in Good Stories, and SMART Tasks | XP123 (French) In XP, we think of requirements of coming in the form of user stories. It would be easy to mistake the story card for the “whole story,” but Ron Jeffries points out that stories in XP have three components: Cards (their physical medium), Conversation (the discussion surrounding them), and Confirmation (tests that verify them). A pidgin language is a simplified language, usually used for trade, that allows people who can’t communicate in their native language to nonetheless work together. But what are characteristics of a good story? I – IndependentN – NegotiableV – ValuableE – EstimableS – SmallT – Testable Independent Stories are easiest to work with if they are independent. We can’t always achieve this; once in a while we may say things like “3 points for the first report, then 1 point for each of the others.” Negotiable… and Negotiated A good story is negotiable. Valuable A story needs to be valuable. This is especially an issue when splitting stories. Estimable Small Testable
Mark C. Curtis: The Designer's Rise Into the Upper Echelons of Business Traditionally, the role of the designer has been to make a concept work. The designer was the creative 'brains' behind a successful product, but existed outside of the realm of the C-Suite. Yet this is starting to change. Today, designers are no longer an auxiliary of the boardroom, but are coming up with the ideas and putting them into action from within the highest ranks of a company. It's an interesting time for designers. We saw a similar shift 40 years ago when an increased focus on consumer marketing and branding gave rise to the role of the Chief Marketing Officer. There's another interesting trend that is having an impact on how design is perceived in an organisation; the ubiquity of the mobile phone and the opportunity it presents in terms of branding and user experience. A number of companies are already investing heavily in a design approach and it's not just Apple, with the infamous Jony Ive, who has appointed design specialists to senior executive roles.
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. So it can be time intensive and a bit wasteful. 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. Workshop Logistics Brainstorm Roles First Wrapping-Up