{"id":1268,"date":"2020-06-16T14:55:40","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T14:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2020-06-27T23:03:09","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T23:03:09","slug":"user-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/2020\/06\/16\/user-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Three ways to create valuable user stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the Product Owner&#8217;s daily duties is backlog management. In fact, it is one of the things in which the <a href=\"https:\/\/agileparrot.com\/product-manager-vs-product-owner-vs-project-manager\/\">Product Owner is better from Product Manager<\/a>. This very important activity is often postponed because it is considered boring or not creative. One can even say that this is work for a scribe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I agree that this is not rocket science but I am sure that preparing good user stories is a demanding task. On top of that &#8211; if you prepare stories correctly you might spot flaws in the way you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">INVEST in good user story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First of all, there are a couple of properties that every user story should cover, and Invest is just a mnemonic for those!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Independent<\/strong>. AC\u2019s should not depend on other stories. It means that every single user story should be written as a separate mini-project.<\/li><li><strong>Negotiable<\/strong>. Leave an option to alter scope if things go bad during a Sprint.<\/li><li><strong>Valuable<\/strong>. They have to give value! If user story gives no value, then there is no point in wasting time on developing it.<\/li><li><strong>Estimable<\/strong>. You have to be able to say how big it is in order to correctly forecast sprints.<\/li><li><strong>Small<\/strong>. Keep things as small as possible as it is a way of improving estimations (there are much more <a href=\"https:\/\/agileparrot.com\/agile-estimating\/\">agile estimations<\/a> than just  planning Poker)<\/li><li><strong>Testable<\/strong>. You need to somehow check if AC\u2019s are met. In other words, you need to ensure that things work before they hit the production.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Start with 3C<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another approach is that if you are creating a user story from scratch, and don&#8217;t know exactly what you are building, then a good way might be to start with a technique named Card-Conversation-Confirmation. It can be even a small workshop. CCC stands for the procedure:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Card. Start by making a very generic sentence about functionality.<\/li><li>Conversation. Discuss what people mean about it.<\/li><li>Confirmation. Make a more formal story based on the previous step.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Make SMART tasks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last but not least another acronym, that will help you validate if a written user story is valuable. This one is used for the checklist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>S<\/strong>pecific goal \u2013 there has to be something to achieve.<\/li><li><strong>M<\/strong>easurable \u2013 you need to measure the thing.<\/li><li><strong>A<\/strong>ction \u2013 start as soon as possible.<\/li><li><strong>R<\/strong>ealistic \u2013 the thing must be doable.<\/li><li><strong>T<\/strong>ime-boxed \u2013 know when things should end.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Summary and tips<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you are new in a Product Owner role &#8211; then use above methods to prepare valuable User Stories. You can later check your knowledge in our <a href=\"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/13\/pspo-quiz-is-ready\/\">PSPO  Quiz<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you are an experienced one, I have still two tips for you, that even best of us sometimes forget:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Focus on <strong>value <\/strong>(it is very important to say why you need this story to be done).<\/li><li><strong>Don\u2019t fix on template<\/strong> *as an Elephant in order to drink I need trunk*. It usually makes sense but if it doesn\u2019t \u2013 don\u2019t enforce it.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Good luck on creating valuable stories!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the Product Owner&#8217;s daily duties is backlog management. In fact, it is one of the things in which the Product Owner is better from Product Manager. This very important activity is often postponed because it is considered boring&hellip; <br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/2020\/06\/16\/user-stories\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":725,"featured_media":1270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,11],"tags":[40,7,41],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-blog","category-scrum","tag-agile","tag-scrum","tag-userstory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/725"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlapshin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}