User Stories
Contents
User stories are development artifacts which provide feature requirements that the software has to conform to.
Epic stories are a summary of all of the user stories of a specific role.
Each user story has several acceptance criteria (criterion) which are specific requirements for that user story
Example
- Some epic story
- Some user story (5 points)
- An acceptance criteria
- Another acceptance criteria
- Yet another acceptance criteria
- Some other user story (3 points)
- Oh look, it’s an acceptance criteria
- More acceptance criteria!
- Some user story (5 points)
- A second epic story
- Some user story (2 points)
- An acceptance criteria
- Another acceptance criteria
- Yet another acceptance criteria
- Some other user story (1 point)
- Oh look, it’s an acceptance criteria
- More acceptance criteria!
- Some user story (2 points)
The RGB Framework
Role
Goal
Benefit
The RGB framework is a method of expressing user stories in the format of:
As a _______ I want to ______ so that _________
Examples
As a librarian, I want to have the facility of searching a book by different criteria so that I will save time to serve a customer.
As a student, I want to be reminded of my class schedule every morning, so that I will be on time
As a lawyer, I want to see all my active cases on the main screen, so that I know what to do for the day
User Story Points
(arbitrary) priority values (known as points) are assigned to each user story, which indicates the priority and time required for that user story to be met.
The time allocated for each point is arbitrary, and is defined by the user.
Epic Stories
An Epic Story covers the high-level features for a role
For particularly high-level stories, Epic stories do not need to follow the RGB framework
i.e As a librarian I want to manage all the books in the library
Acceptance Criteria
The acceptance criterion are individual requirements and functionality for each user story
When ____, then _____
Three C's of a User Story
Card
The physical representation (post-it note!) summarising who, what and why
Conversation
The dialogue between parties, specifying concrete feature requests and requirements
Confirmation
The acknowledgement of the procured requirements and tasks
The INVEST Framework
I ndependent
N egotiable
V aluable
E timatable
S mall
T estable
Independent
Each user story should not need to rely on other user stories
Negotiable
Leave room for more details
“Breadth first, depth later”
Valuable
Delivers value to the customer and end user
(value of the user story)
Estimatable
Story needs to be clear enough to estimate the needed time
Small
Each user story should be small, and deliverable within time
Testable
Clear acceptance criteria