55
votes
Accepted
How to deal with stories that share functionality
User Stories are not system specifications or functional requirements. Rather, they are the beginning of a conversation that can lead to such specifications or requirements.
Accordingly, I would ...
- 201k
33
votes
My use case diagram is a mess. What can I do?
The biggest problem that I see is the wrong level of abstraction.
First, I'd remove the things that aren't use cases. A use case describes a goal that an actor has. "Log In", "Two-...
- 85.9k
20
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My use case diagram is a mess. What can I do?
Two approaches might help you:
Don't try to cram several use cases into one diagram - instead, create individual diagrams where each shows only one (main) use case. This will make it a lot clearer ...
- 220k
15
votes
How to deal with stories that share functionality
Don't: Try and split the stories, Do one story and then the other.
Do: Ensure the dev team is aware of the second story.
The problem with trying to plan out the detailed tasks and thing up a generic ...
- 84.4k
14
votes
Does this count as a user story for a basic Sudoku game?
Your examples can count as user stories, but they are missing a very important part: the goal that the user wants to achieve when the story is implemented.
This goal might be obvious to you, but you ...
12
votes
Accepted
Is an user story totally a requirement from the user?
If the user story is totally a requirement from the user, should the BA ask the question so that the user says, "As a user, I want to... so that I can..."
Don't take this too literally. ...
- 46.2k
11
votes
Accepted
Shared Development Tasks for Agile User Stories
I shouldn't write a "Generate UI and DB" Task for each User Story. That's too much redundancy. But I don't know how to write a "Generate UI and DB" task that must be completed before any of the User ...
- 843
11
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Cloning Jira tickets at the end of a sprint - carrying over effort and points
If at the end of your sprints often you have many big tickets that are 90% - 95% done then there is something wrong:
Red flag #1: Lots of things get packed into a sprint but are not finished
Red flag ...
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8
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How should I translate a requirements document into user stories?
But my team is working using agile methods (a combination of scrum and kanban), so what we need is user stories.
This is a misconception. Neither Scrum nor Kanban require that requirements be ...
- 85.9k
8
votes
Accepted
How to handle a user story that is significantly larger than estimated
My recommendation would be to remove it from the current sprint, and then continue the sprint as usual. Don't "backfill" the sprint (though, I'm not 100% certain by what you mean by that). If you ...
- 25.5k
8
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Is there a recommended format for writing a technical debt story?
The roadblock you're running into is there by design, and you're running into it for the correct reasons.
User stories are things the user cares about. That's why it's written from the point of view ...
- 59.5k
8
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How to give/get the necessary implementation details in agile user stories?
I want a glass of milk.
What kind of milk?
Don't care. Just milk.
Warm or cold?
Whatever give me milk.
2% or ...
Milk!
OK fine here's your milk.
Eew, give me some milk that isn't past it's ...
- 120k
7
votes
Accepted
User stories - Different formats for different purposes?
The classical user-story describes a desired feature from the point of view of a user. It is very synthetic in view of the 3 C: stories are written on a Card, they are the promise for a Conversation ...
- 82.2k
7
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Is an user story totally a requirement from the user?
The question exposes some fundamental misunderstandings in what a user story is.
The first misconception is about what a user story is.
Stories originate from Extreme Programming. A core practice of ...
- 85.9k
6
votes
Is it feasible to use User Stories and Use Cases in the same team?
What's a use case ?
Let's look at the definition of Ivar Jacobson, the guy who invented the concept before UML even existed:
A use case is all the ways of using a system to achieve a particular
goal ...
- 82.2k
6
votes
User stories - how to include technology?
It's important to make a distinction here between a use case and a user story. A user story is a user-legible document describing the needs of a user in a program. It should be something that any ...
- 22.9k
6
votes
Can story points be used to describe size of several projects estimated by several teams?
Assuming a common reference of story point size that seems reasonable. However generally story points are a per team concept and can't be used across teams like that.
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6
votes
Accepted
User Stories and Epics
Before I say anything else, I want to say this - don't waste too much time trying to adhere to a best practice or a prescribed format. Instead, just do whatever lets you capture the requirements and ...
- 9,490
6
votes
Accepted
Is it common for seemingly small feature additions to involve changing many functions?
Yes, this is normal.
The conventional wisdom these days is that it is overall more efficient to build what you need first, without first considering all consequences on all possible later features or ...
- 111k
6
votes
How to give/get the necessary implementation details in agile user stories?
Users and other stakeholders should not have to be concerned about how you implement your system. All they should care about is what it does, not how it does it.
You're quite correct that many ...
- 201k
5
votes
How to deal with redundant requirements when using Scrum
It sounds like this should be covered by grooming.
Constant change means that stories often need to be corrected, expanded, split, condensed, joined, re-estimated etc.
It is a good idea to groom all ...
- 9,843
5
votes
Normalizing story points across teams, is there a big problem?
This is a bad idea. The entire point of estimating by story points is to have an abstract unit that isn't directly comparable to time or across teams. You don't learn any useful information by trying ...
- 13.5k
5
votes
How to keep CRUD user stories from being trite and simplistic?
Your reasons ("So I can ...") are too vague.
"Keep Track of my Clients" is not a requirement; it is a wish. Make your reasons more specific. A genuine requirement is always ...
- 201k
5
votes
Accepted
User story - Discussing the secondary actors of a use case
User stories generally don't include implementation details. They aim to capture the functionality the user is looking for:
As a customer, I want to be able to view the catalog of items for sale
As a ...
- 5,586
5
votes
User stories with multiple users/roles
You seem to have already answered your own question:
Scenario: - There are two external user types - sellers and buyers.
From this, I infer that you have other roles that are considered internal (e....
- 59.5k
5
votes
Accepted
Should the team reduce future estimates after becoming competent at a new skill, because estimates were increased while learning?
I see several potential problems here.
The whole point of using story points and velocity is to hand-wave away hourly estimates, but ultimately story points must eventually correlate in some way to ...
- 201k
5
votes
Accepted
When epics are used, should all user stories belong to an epic?
What do you mean by "Epic"? It's not a well-defined term or concept.
Sometimes, the term "Epic" is used as a short, simple way of saying "unrefined story". When you have ...
- 85.9k
5
votes
Should story points be re-estimated when rolling un-finished stories into next sprint?
I think if there is any lesson to take away from scrum and agile as a whole its "Don't waste time worrying about estimates not being right"
If you didn't finish the 5pt task in the last ...
- 84.4k
5
votes
Is an user story totally a requirement from the user?
You seem to be stuck in the (IMHO weird) idea of a user story being always something which is created by a business analyst making an interview with a user.
Sorry, but this is just a thought model, a ...
- 220k
4
votes
Cloning Jira tickets at the end of a sprint - carrying over effort and points
The idea behind putting a story that has not been completed in its entirety on the next iteration (or the backlog) is that the team should not get credit for unfinished work. This should give the team ...
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