Writing user stories- Process & Method

Scrum Concepts- Writing user stories

Writing good user stories is one of the hardest things to do and requires practice and patience. Important considerations for writing a good user story are:

1)      Start with the broad idea- Initially there is a broad idea about what functional and non-functional work that needs to delivered.  As a result, stories that are developed early on are large and often lack details. These are known as Epic Stories or Epics.

2)      Make it granular- As the team learns more and gains clarity on the user needs, the Epics are decomposed to the right user stories.

      Methods to write good user stories

1)      Follow the INVEST acronym- Stories should be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small and testable. That means that each story can and should deliver value all by itself. The rule of thumb is that it could be released to production and provide value even if it's the only thing delivered. Use function-based analysis which are the basic steps in accomplishing a task

2)      CRUD is elegant- The simplest steps to use are create, read, update, and delete. CRUD identifies the functions needed to add value to a system. So, using an example of a CRM tool with an Epic that reads- As a salesperson, I want to be able to search or read about my customer's profile so that I have accurate information. This is clearly too large to be handled in a single sprint, but using the Crud breakdown stories will be like this- As a salesperson, I want to create a customer profile so I can save their information.

3)      Steps in a process- Break down the stories into the steps in a process. For example, if you're building an online product catalog, follow the steps a buyer would take. Those steps are something like log in, browse available products, view product details, and register for a course. Each one of these steps can be a user story because each one can deliver value on its own.