Story Writing

Supports Pillars:

Business Value, Product

Dependencies on Other Skills:

None

Definition:

A story identifies a minimal piece of functionality that has business value to the customer. Crafting stories involves identifying such functionality and the value that it provides and stating it simply.

One popular approach to writing stories is the story template created at Connextra: "As a <user> I want to <do something> so that I can <gain some benefit>." The template is useful for keeping story statements simple and exposing the things that a good story has (i.e. a user, a function, and some value.) Unfortunately the template does not guarantee good stories and is frequently abused.

Resources:

User Stories Applied / Mike Cohn

Steps to Mastery:

Stories express business goals without implying particular solutions

Stories have no dependencies on other stories

Stories are also minimally-marketable-features

Organizational Support of this Skill:

Courage to release narrowly-defined functionality.