Writing user stories backward
Writing user stories backward
Purpose of the exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help to understand the format of the user stories and see how the same writing template can be different in complexity and there for in effort.
Preparation
Bring a very simple explanation on the format. for examples :
There are many different approaches to write user stories. One that I like says “A user story will tell what a particular user can ( or dream to) do and why”.
We will try to make it very concise and precise.
As a <role> I can <capability>, so that <receive benefit>
In order to <receive benefit> as a <role> , I can <goal>
As <role> <when> <where>, I <want to> because <why>
User -> what is the role of the person that is telling the story. So we understand his purpose and point of view.
What -> What is the action that the user is doing
Why -> Why the user is doing that action. What is the final objective of that action
Development of the session
We start with a blank Document .
we ask the participants to choose a web site or an software application of their choice.
we ask the participants to take an screenshot ( or many ) and add it to the first page of the document.
we explain the format of the user stories ( very short and precise explanation.
We ask the participants to try to figure out which were the user stories that resulted in the screenshot that we can observe.
Once we have between 5 and 20 user stories, let's try to identify which are the roles or PERSONAS who participate in these user stories. The "Who".
After this we will try to clarify what were the needs or the ultimate goal PERSONAS had the ambition to achieve with these user stories. The "Why".
Finally, we are going to observe what the PERSONAS requests and see if that can be improved in any way. If there are any counterproposals that could be made to improve the results.
Learnings
You'll have to choose a limited number of learnings among this
A user story can be very small or very big
A user story can be dependent on other user story and this will determine priority
when the why says "Buy" the Who can't be a visitor. the facilitator should decide is he want to talk about this or not.
The facilitation can explain conversion funnel and customer journey happy path but that won't fit in 1 hour workshop
References
https://www.agilealliance.org/create-personas-with-the-help-of-the-engineers/
https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/user-stories/
The Amazon example
As a Visitor I can search for the product that i’m looking for
As a visitor I can see a see a list of products that match my search so I can choose the product
As a visitor I can filter the search result by price range
As Sales Director of Amazon I have a Website so my customer can publish their articles
As a marketing directo I have the logo of amazon at the top left of our website so we promote the trademark
As a registered user I can see the postal code of my default address at the top
As a Registered user I can manage my account preference
A marketing Director I display the number of items in the search results so the visitors are impressed !
As a visitor I can see the number of result after a search so I evaluate if I have to refine my search
