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Questions tagged [user-stories]

User stories are used with Agile software development methodologies as the basis for defining the functions a business system must provide, and to facilitate requirements management. It captures the 'who', 'what' and 'why' of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small paper notecard

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86 votes
7 answers
168k views

What is the weighting difference between Epic/Story/Task

I am slightly confused between the three. From my understanding: Epic - Create a web site (T shirt size) (L) Story - Create the Home page (1 point) Task - Create a button on the home page that is ...
bobo2000's user avatar
  • 3,882
45 votes
14 answers
28k views

Should bugs be treated as stories or as tasks?

If you're using scrum you should know that there is a clear difference between tasks and stories. A story is something that is valuable to user. A task is a step to produce that value to user. So, ...
Vanuan's user avatar
  • 703
31 votes
2 answers
48k views

Why do Scrum user stories only use the Fibonacci series?

I know that user stories in Scrum are measured with a Modified Fibonacci sequence (0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40...). Why does Scrum only use Fibonacci numbers to estimate stories?
Anoop's user avatar
  • 569
25 votes
3 answers
14k views

In Scrum, how to estimate research stories?

In our Scrum team, when there is uncertainty about a story or the team is not sure about how to implement it, we take up a research story first. Based on the findings of this research story, we are ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
21 votes
9 answers
29k views

What is the difference between acceptance criteria and the definition of done?

I don't get what is the difference between both. They seem to be similar to me. For instance, I have this typical login/register User Story. Can you provide some DOD examples? As a user I want to ...
Ruslan Doronichev's user avatar
20 votes
9 answers
9k views

How should a Scrum master handle disagreements about story-point estimates in Scrum?

For example : Some see its userstory (e.g. 2 points) and others see technical complications and judge that the story should be 20 points. The 2-point voters say, "I understand your opinion, but don't ...
user38787's user avatar
  • 217
16 votes
5 answers
14k views

Should I remove a User Story from a Sprint in progress if I know we can't complete it?

In the sprint can we remove (move to the upcoming sprint) the planned stories (mid sprint), if we are 100% sure we can’t complete them? Example given: Suppose we planned to 5 stories to be completed ...
Lalit Singh Rana's user avatar
15 votes
4 answers
19k views

When does a Scrum Team assign story points to the stories in the Scrum methodology?

I am in the process of learning Scrum. I got stuck with a question: on which stage does the Scrum Team assign story points to the user stories?
jithin's user avatar
  • 153
15 votes
3 answers
4k views

Can we have zero point stories?

Our Agile/Scrum team follows the Fibonacci sequence for story point estimation. However, it is not clear whether we should have any zero point stories at all. Even though a story may have minimal ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
936 views

How to use Story Points, if User Stories are completely different?

Story Points (SP) is a good measurement, that allows estimating User Stories. SP (in my understanding, it's an important note) is convenient because it is relative and not related with time. All ...
Sergey Kudryavtsev's user avatar
14 votes
8 answers
14k views

Is it a problem when many stories start with: "As the system,..."

I'm a developer on a scrum team and I'm finding it hard to understand and empathize with the end goal when stories start with "As the system". These stories should be straight forward because as a ...
Barry G's user avatar
  • 241
14 votes
4 answers
4k views

Should the Product Owner dictate what info the UI needs to display?

I hope someone can help me understand one part of the role of the Product Owner (PO). In my company, we have a PO that is responsible for the Product Backlogs of all our products. I work as a UX ...
A designer's user avatar
13 votes
7 answers
3k views

Should you export data to Excel and Word?

I'm the Project Manager for a large application that customers use to collect data on whether their businesses meet certain medical and financial standards. They generally answer a survey explaining ...
Yannis's user avatar
  • 181
12 votes
6 answers
982 views

Why use iterations in Scrum?

I am a Scrum Master in a 7 person team. We currently use one-week iterations for our sprints. I find that sprint planning overhead is huge (2 hours each week for entire team), and not nearly as ...
F.Z's user avatar
  • 123
12 votes
6 answers
670 views

What level of analysis should the development team expect before being asked to estimate and develop a story?

Here is an example of s story that recently made its way into a timebox. As an Ecommerce Executive, I want to make improvements to the Request a Callback form which will make it easier to segment the ...
davy's user avatar
  • 383
12 votes
5 answers
10k views

What level of detail should I include in epics?

I am writing user stories for a new project. One of my epics is: As a company owner I want a graphical profile so I can build my visual identity. And then there are multiple user stories linked to ...
Andreas's user avatar
  • 323
12 votes
3 answers
4k views

In our Agile/Scrum team, should we move or split incomplete stories?

Our Agile/Scrum teams are getting better at taking on manageable workload and completing them fully. However, sometimes for a variety of good reasons, some of the stories are not fully done at the end ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
977 views

How to keep track of all the goals of a large project?

I have a very large library project in-progress involving French linguistics - (it will be) multi-faceted to work with the many aspects of language, including algorithmic inflections/conjugations, ...
Chris Cirefice's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
2k views

Which scrum actors should attend a requirements gathering session

I'm currently having a debate with some of my business analysts as to whether the testers and developers from the scrum team assigned to a project should be involved in the requirements gathering ...
El Toro Bauldo's user avatar
11 votes
7 answers
4k views

How to properly create story maps? (user stories)

I have a website that I need to build and want to properly create story maps. I am just learning how to do this so I would love a bit of help. My setup: Users: admins customers personal business ...
Cristian's user avatar
  • 249
10 votes
4 answers
2k views

Sizing an entire backlog using story points

I'm a PM on a large multi-year project with a sizable backlog of work implementing Scrum in 4 week release cycles. I hold weekly backlog grooming sessions with the project team and key business ...
KirMasAna's user avatar
  • 181
10 votes
3 answers
374 views

Is it OK to defer implementation detail and consider user story to be done?

I am just getting into user stories (read some blogs and watched some of Mike Cohn's presentations). My current understanding is that the story is a vertical slice of the system. Stories are not "Add ...
Siim Haas's user avatar
  • 348
10 votes
3 answers
2k views

Is there a difference between use case and user stories?

Is there any difference between use case and user stories? Or are these totally different terms in the context of agile planning?
chrisjlee's user avatar
  • 1,699
10 votes
2 answers
2k views

User stories delivery issues

Working in Agile manner, project team routinely delivers parts of software, described in User Stories. Upon each Sprint a working software is delivered, with some additional features added. The ...
Rodion Bykov's user avatar
10 votes
3 answers
1k views

What are the best practices/methods/tools/techniques for conflict identification in requirements?

For the sake of this discussion requirements = user-stories (since I'm not differentiating any process per se and would like to get rid of any ambiguities). It's quite common to have a set of about ...
PhD's user avatar
  • 870
10 votes
4 answers
564 views

Is it OK for a Scrum Master to allow a developer to work on a story not prioritized by the Product Owner, if it is on own time?

Here is the story (no pun intended): The Product Owner had a fairly common feature prioritized in the second sprint. It was estimated with low story points. The story was completed and in testing the ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
10 votes
4 answers
2k views

Improve performance of feature X - should that be a new user story or something else?

We have implemented and closed user story X but found out later that the implementation is too slow and we need to improve performance. I think it was a mistake not to have acceptance criteria for ...
Borek Bernard's user avatar
10 votes
4 answers
734 views

How to write a user story involving artistic work?

Using Scrum, what would be the way to define, structure and estimate a user story, containing work for an artist? The main problem that I'm interested here is that an artistic story can take a long ...
David's user avatar
  • 123
10 votes
2 answers
8k views

What is a good total size for a Product Backlog?

General I realize the size of a product backlog will vary with each project. But assuming a project that is large enough to require a significant length time, is there any research or statistics on ...
CLo's user avatar
  • 203
9 votes
7 answers
12k views

Do user stories which start with "As a product owner I want ..." make sense?

We "teached" our product owner to write user stories using the template "As a ... I want ... so that ..." (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story#Format) . However he/she is now writing the user ...
asmaier's user avatar
  • 283
9 votes
4 answers
3k views

Does the scrum master also estimate user stories?

We recently started working with scrum on an new (large) project. I am a developer but do not take part in that project other than my role as scrum master. I know about the software they use, but don'...
Jan Doggen's user avatar
9 votes
8 answers
2k views

How to manage very small, easy tasks in Agile?

Let's say you have a bug on your website. Your developer needs to fix some CSS or something. He estimates it will take him one minute to fix. What is the best way to manage these kinds of tasks? Do ...
Jake Wilson's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
11k views

How to estimate a project budget using story points?

Current workflow in our company: I create Given/When/Then scenarios or User stories Developers estimate Scenarios/User stories in hours, by giving minimum and maximum amount of time for 1 scenario/...
Ruslan Doronichev's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
6k views

How to map user stories into tickets?

Currently in my workplace we use Redmine as our backlog management system. It works pretty well for us, but lately (as the company grew), I've been noticing that our tickets tend to be very long (both ...
Muc's user avatar
  • 191
9 votes
3 answers
5k views

What to do with unexpectedly blocked story in scrum?

We have a low-pointed story which was dev-complete but, during testing, revealed a problem. In investigating the problem it was discovered that an external party will be required to deliver a fix. The ...
Matt W's user avatar
  • 905
8 votes
4 answers
902 views

How to write implementing HTTPS as a user story?

The title sums the question up pretty well. How do you do that? Should you even make implementing HTTPS a user story? I thought of: "As a page visitor I want all communication with the service to be ...
Andreas's user avatar
  • 323
8 votes
3 answers
2k views

User story conversation vs. scope creep

TL; DR; What is the difference between: A) The details evoked & scope definitions & acceptance criteria gained from the ongoing "user story conversation" a team should have with the PO, BAs, ...
Bernardo's user avatar
  • 291
8 votes
1 answer
799 views

Do you consider a defect an actual defect if it occurs in Dev prior to the acceptance of the User Story as Done?

A fully agile centric question. If an exception, error, defect or bug occurs prior to the completion of a user story; do you log it is a bug or do simply consider part of the work required to make ...
Venture2099's user avatar
  • 4,055
8 votes
3 answers
1k views

What is the term for an anti-user-story?

I need to create some short narratives that capture the "who", "what", and "why not" to show some of our stakeholders why we need a minor policy change. For example, imagine I'm designing a control ...
Eponymous's user avatar
  • 183
8 votes
3 answers
3k views

An Epic within an Epic

First off, I believe I have a good understanding of User Story Hierarchy (Epic > Story > Task), but I've had a quick search around and I wasn't able to find a definitive answer to this. Can you ...
tombraider's user avatar
8 votes
5 answers
2k views

User stories - difficult to decide actor

I always have trouble deciding who the actor should be and therefore how user stories should be written. For example: As a site owner I would like to display a carousel of products on the homepage ...
Marty Wallace's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

Develop from Use Cases or Business Requirements

I'm involved in a project where the business team created a large business requirements document that were using to create product backlog items and acceptance criteria. However, they have also ...
wilbev's user avatar
  • 273
8 votes
4 answers
459 views

Should developers be talking to users during Story planning / refinement?

When you have a Product Owner who is less technical, can developers be brought into discovery with users and stakeholders? e.g. A new project is underway and the PO is doing discovery, creating epics,...
TheLearner's user avatar
  • 2,529
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

Agile in enterprise: How to represent the requirements of non-business stakeholders?

I currently work on a large scale software project in a large company. We follow an agile approach for development; however, due to the size of the the company there are several stakeholders that ...
eviloop's user avatar
  • 83
7 votes
5 answers
3k views

Should I leave building the database for the end?

Let's suppose that, as a PO, I have a mini-project with my team. The project consists of displaying messages and announcements on big shared screen. The admin can write messages on a page on his ...
cascadox's user avatar
  • 175
7 votes
5 answers
5k views

How to manage story points when several developers work on 1 story?

My team consists of 2 backend devs, 1 front end dev and designer. Lets pretend we have next user story: As a user I want to sign-in/sign-out to use the system Designer says that it is equal to 2 ...
Ruslan Doronichev's user avatar
7 votes
7 answers
2k views

What can the team do to prevent stories from completing until the last day of the sprint?

I've read that ideally the team is completing stories throughout the sprint and that shows gradual progression on the burndown chart. My team can only really complete stories at the very end of the ...
Zack's user avatar
  • 71
7 votes
7 answers
946 views

Is it fine to correct an estimation of a story during execution?

During the sprint execution, the team should be allowed to change the estimation of a story in the following scenarios. During execution When a story is finished Re-estimate in the absence of the ...
ssharma's user avatar
  • 817
7 votes
3 answers
4k views

Can a single user story be associated with multiple epics?

For example, we have two epics, 'User Management' and 'SSO API', which are broken down appropriately. A user story for lost password functionality is created, but the story is relevant to both epics. ...
tombraider's user avatar
7 votes
3 answers
2k views

Changing backlog story point estimates mid way through a release

Background: We are mid-way through a development which was estimated for a customer on a fixed price contract. To come up with the estimate we built a backlog by trying to list all user stories and ...
Rob Bird's user avatar
  • 527

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