User Story - what is it?
About problems, criteria and formats
JULY 18, 2022
Many know about the term User Story, but not everyone can explain what it means, its benefits and situations for its use.
User Story is a short statement of the intention that the system should do for the user. This is your personal assumption or coming from a user survey.
Sentence for User Story:
I ___________, I want _____________, that _____________.
User Story is a short statement of the intention that the system should do for the user. This is your personal assumption or coming from a user survey.
Sentence for User Story:
I ___________, I want _____________, that _____________.
Example: I am a student of the school, I want to listen a music that to tune in to study.
We will return to the formula (sentence) above. Now we need this for an initial understanding of the meaning of how the user's intentions are packaged.
How does User Story help and why is it needed
- To describe the elements of the backlog
- For a better understanding of users (who they are)
- To describe the product requirements in a language that is understandable to everyone
- To involve users and other stakeholders in the development process
- To build User Story Mapping
How to formulate a User Story
I have specially prepared a small diagram that is as simple as possible to explain the essence of working with User Story.
- What kind of user is this? We find out what role it plays, what type of user it is, a brief portrait.
- What action does the user want to perform in the product or what result does he expect to get?
- Why would he do that? What is the value in this? What does the user want to get?
Now, to consolidate the theory, we need examples
I am a visitor to the Simha Design website, I want to read useful content about products and design that to improve my skills in working on my own product.
As a buyer of site N, I want to search for books by genre that to quickly find the ones I like to read.
Let's analyze the second example in more detail.
Let's assume that we make up the wishes of users and got something like this story:
Let's assume that we make up the wishes of users and got something like this story:
"As a buyer, I need a large store where I could buy any book I liked".
We agree that the story turned out to be too vague and does not carry specifics.
We need to achieve specifics and formalize it in a User Story:
We need to achieve specifics and formalize it in a User Story:
"As a buyer of site N, I want to search for books by genre that to quickly find the ones I like to read".
As a result, we managed to identify a specific Actor, one Action, there is one value, influence on the Actor (Impact).
I draw your attention to the fact that in User Story we need not just Value, but the Impact of the action.
I draw your attention to the fact that in User Story we need not just Value, but the Impact of the action.
An example from my practice
Let's analyze the following user story:
"As the chief accountant of the contracts service, I generate a report on all contracts that to make a decision faster".
From this story, the question arises:
- How do we understand that the user made the decision faster
"As the chief accountant of the contracts service, I generate a report on all contracts twice as fast that to make a decision faster".
It has become better and now we understand that the speed of report generation can affect decision-making.
But what is the value that an accountant began to generate a report faster? Is it true that this affects the acceleration of the decision-making process?
Please note that such questions arise because of the doubts we have written in Impact.
We have many options for what you can write after "that to...". We must remember that User Story should pursue our global goal of product improvements.
We don't need to write what we don't believe in ourselves. In other words, do not write an Impact that does not exist and cannot exist.
Therefore, for a correct User Story, we need to check ourselves:
But what is the value that an accountant began to generate a report faster? Is it true that this affects the acceleration of the decision-making process?
Please note that such questions arise because of the doubts we have written in Impact.
We have many options for what you can write after "that to...". We must remember that User Story should pursue our global goal of product improvements.
We don't need to write what we don't believe in ourselves. In other words, do not write an Impact that does not exist and cannot exist.
Therefore, for a correct User Story, we need to check ourselves:
- Making an Impact Map is what contains the goal, who and how will achieve it, what will need to be done.
- We have a global goal (to increase the speed of decision-making for the agreement of contracts)
- We have identified an Actor (Chief Accountant)
- We have formulated an assumption (if the accountant receives a report on all contracts faster, this will lead to the achievement of our global goal)
- As a result, if we understand that our assumption can help achieve a global goal, then we can leave the Impact formulation and test the story
"As the chief accountant of the contracts service, I generate a report on all contracts in just 30 seconds that to make a decision faster for their approval within the report itself".
User Story by "INVEST" criteria
And so smoothly we moved on to the criteria:
I - Independent of other stories, can be implemented in any order
N - Negotiated, reflects the essence, of the details; does not contain specific implementation steps
V - Valuable for customers, businesses and stakeholders
E - Estimated by complexity and labor costs
S - So compact, can be made by a team in one iteration
T - Tested, has acceptance criteria
I - Independent of other stories, can be implemented in any order
N - Negotiated, reflects the essence, of the details; does not contain specific implementation steps
V - Valuable for customers, businesses and stakeholders
E - Estimated by complexity and labor costs
S - So compact, can be made by a team in one iteration
T - Tested, has acceptance criteria
When to use User Story
- To identify valuable functionality for development
- When you don't understand who your users are and why they are still with you
- To describe the user's portrait
- Before the launch of advertising (a brief brief for the marketing department)
Let's summarize the results
- We need to write a lot of stories, but not cumbersome, but clear and understandable to the entire product team
- Prioritize stories
- Test stories before starting development
- Rate stories
- History is not a task, but an occasion for discussion and a test. It cannot be sent to development if the CustDev stage is not passed.