How to Create User Stories

Traditional Project Management techniques involve the creation of use cases to develop specific business requirements. While this is good for large, very structured organizations, it may not be well suited for smaller, more fluid units. User stories allow fast paced, dynamic projects with ever so often changing requirements to be completed accurately and successfully.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Find the creative people within your organization. Overly technical types and those with obsessive compulsive tendencies will not work well in this environment. User stories are for creative visionaries who like to communicate.
2. Explain what you want to accomplish with this project. A clearly defined goal is imperative to the success of the project.
3. Break the goal(s) down into a series of smaller steps. Each step should be one piece of functionality that is totally committed to bringing you closer to the project goal.
4. Direct your creative thinkers to come up with a story of how a user will use the system and execute that particular piece of functionality. Do not use "Step one", "Step two" and so on in your user stories. They are not intended to be a line by line set of directions, rather, a story of the trip.
5. Allow the end user (the customer) to review the user story and agree (or disagree) that it correctly and accurately captured what they are trying to accomplish.
6. Hand off the story to your developers.

Tips & Warnings

• User stories are not for the inexperienced project manager. Working in this environment demands a self driven and highly disciplined team of cross trained individuals. There are no clear divisions of labor in this environment.