An interesting thought came to mind when I was explaining User Stories to one of the team I am coaching. There are some guiding principles and practices that we must follow to be successful in writing and executing the User Stories. These are what I call commandments of writing a USer Story.
What do we mean by Commandments? Let’s first look at the definition of “Commandment”.
The commandments could be a religious or moral imperatives; they act as “guiding lighthouse” to a purpose, and you hope to live by those commandments to reach certain purpose in life. In essence, they are guiding principles for individuals you hope to live by.
Similarly, in Agile projects, the purpose is to deliver business value; in small increments with each iteration. User Story is the neucleus of Agile project and success of the project heavilty depends on them. I belive there are “Ten Commandments of User Stories” that will help any team venturing on the Agile journey and guide them to success.
So, here they are: the Ten commandments of User Stories
- Thou must deliver Business value
- Thou must prioritize User Stories based on Business Value (by Product Owner) and Team must take collective ownership
- Thou must be validation centric
- Thou must be “Done Done Done”
- Thou must have 3Cs
- Thou must be Crosss functional (california roll)
- Thous must INVEST in User Stories (the six attributes)
- Thou must Size and Estimate (using Story points)
- Thou must Swarm (and complete few stories at a time)
- Thou must post Story Burnup chart
