This document discusses user stories and how they are often misunderstood and misused, leading to bad outcomes. It covers common templates like "As a user I want X so that Y", acronyms like INVEST, and estimation techniques like story points. While templates, acronyms and techniques were created with good intentions to help define and size stories, they are often applied rigidly without considering context, and can result in stories that are not independent, valuable or testable. The document advocates understanding the original purpose of user stories and adapting any related practices to the specific team and project context to avoid dysfunction.

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Seb Rose
User stories:
from good intentions to
bad advice

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Agenda
Why user stories?
Examples:
•Template
•Acronym
•Technique
Bad outcomes

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Agenda
Why user stories?
Examples:
•Template
•Acronym
•Technique
Bad outcomes

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As a <role>
I want <goal/desire>
So that <benefit>
Template - Connextra

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Placeholder for a conversa=on

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“That’s not a real user story …”
Too technical
Not shippable
Wrong format

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ConfeB party
User stories are
NOT
requirementsUser stories areEPHEMERAL

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The Connextra
template has let
us forget why user
stories were

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I N V E S T
Acronym

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Independent
Nego=able
Valuable
Es=matable
Small
Testable
I
N
V
E
S
T
Discussion

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IndependentI
N
V
E
S
T

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Independent DependentAre these stories or ?

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Independent

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Independent
Dependent

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Valuable
I
N
V
E
S
T

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Minimum marketable feature (MMF)?
What is value?
Potentially shippable increment?
Demonstrable functionality?
How might these interact with
“Small”???

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anything that:
Value is …
- increases knowledge
- decreases risk
- generates useful feedback

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INVEST
leaves plenty of
room for
misinterpretation

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Technique -
story points

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- Have no units
- Are rela=ve
- Are team specific
- Es=mated by people doing the work
Story points - refresher

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Story points are rela=ve

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120 cm
40 cm60 cm
100 cm
70 cm

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... these studies which have for a few years now
given rise to the claim that "research shows that
people are better at relative than absolute
estimation" do not in fact seem to square with
that claim.
This doesn't entail that relative estimation
doesn't work - only that it is not proven.
http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/relative.html

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12 cm
4 cm
6 cm
10 cm
7 cm

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Is it small,
or just far away?

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Story points
continue to cause
massive
dysfunction

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Story points - apology

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hAps://esCmaCon.lunarlogic.io/assets/cards-range-8fc41b2e3fd282125f4602a712020204.png
https://estimation.lunarlogic.io/

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Bad outcomes
That doesn’t work here!

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Examples revisited

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No silver bullet
Not only are there no silver bullets
now in view, the very nature of
software makes it unlikely that there
will be any.
Frederick P. Brooks
"No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering,"
Computer, Vol. 20, No. 4 (April 1987) pp. 10-19

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PaPerns can help us filter
•Name
•Problem
•Context
•Forces
•Solution
•Resulting Context
•Known Uses
•Related Patterns
•http://wiki.c2.com/?CanonicalForm
•Context
•Forces

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Takeaways
Understand the
“Why”Always consider
your context
Bad outcomes
don’t mean the
advice was bad

34. Seb Rose
Twitter: @sebrose
Blog: http:/cucumber.io/blog
E-mail: seb@smartbear.com http://bddbooks.com