Why User Stories?

Agile teams tend to be familiar with user stories. Mike Cohn1 introduced them as a way to concisely describe functionality that would be valuable to a user, and they are a key agile practice. User stories emphasize feature essentials from the stakeholder’s view, helping to ensure that only what is needed is developed—and no more.

1. Cohn, Mike, 2010. User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development. Pearson Education, Inc.

A user story takes the following format:

As a <role> I can <goal> so that <business value>

• The role is a specific stakeholder role that the story is targeted for.

• The goal is what the story will accomplish (not the “how”).2

2. A necessary comment here—one of the biggest problems we see with teams when ...

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