Agile Requirements

Management with User Stories

Fran O’Hara
fran.ohara@inspireqs.ie
Inspire Quality Services

www.inspireqs.ie – Agile Training & Coaching

In association with AgileInnovation
Agenda

• Why user stories?

• Backlogs, Epics, Stories, Acceptance Criteria…

• Estimation and Planning with Stories

What’s Wrong with ‘Requirements’?
– Mandatory, Fixed, Hard to Change
– Feature Centric rather than Value Centric
– Specify the What, not the Why
– Critical bits hidden in the detail
– Expensive

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 Communication Modes

Synchronous
Bi-Directional

IM?

Social Networking?
Wiki?
Asynchronous
Uni-Directional

http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/communication.htm
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 What is a User Story?
• A Written Card
– For Planning
– A Promise to Talk
• Spec by Example
– Acceptance Criteria
• It Defines • What its not:
– The Actor/User/Persona – A Use Case
– The Goal/Action/Task – Requirements Document
– The Benefit/Value – Scenarios
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Why User Stories?
• User Centric – what’s important to your customer
• Story – The Power of Narrative
– We pay much more attention to stories than facts
– Drives generation of tacit knowledge
– A story paints a picture, and a picture tells a thousand
words
• Focus on the benefit, the value, what’s important
– Define Acceptance Criteria BEFORE we implement
• Supports ‘pull’ of information as its needed
– Iterative development

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Specification
 User Story
As a HomeOwner, I want to regularly trim my lawn so its neat and tidy.
 Co-Design

Problem Innovation Solution

Space Space Space
Customers Uncertainty Developers
End Users Ambiguity Architects
Domain Experts Conversation UI/UX Designers
Product Owner Social Objects

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 Theme Feature/
Story
Strategic Epic
Vision Objective
Large, Uncertain
Sub-Sprint
May be 1 or
more per Stories
release

Book using air

miles
Book flights
Rebook a flight I
Premium take often
Frequent flyer
benefits Cancel up to 24
hours before
with no charge
Cancel flights
Emailed
confirmation

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 User Stories - CCC
INVEST
Card

Independent
As a customer I can search
As a <role> for products so that I can

Negotiable
I need <action> view their details
Valuable
so that <result> Value: Med Estimate: 3 pts
Estimable
Risk: Low

Small

Testable

Confirmation
•I can find all products
•I can use any search
criteria I need Conversation
•Once found I can view
details
•….

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User Story Example – Email Attachments

Email Attachments. CONVERSATION:

• What if attachment
As a user I want emails with
attachments to go faster so that already compressed?
I can work more efficiently • What if it’s a small file
to start with?
Confirmation: • Should we store the
compressed version?
• User notices emails with • Should we allow user
attachments go at least select compression
twice as fast options?
• Works with attachments up • Would up to 100
to 10MB attachments be
• Works with up to 50 enough?
attachments • Can each attachment
be up to 10MB?

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User Story Example – Hotel Reservation
Reservation Cancellation
CONVERSATION
CONVERSATION:
As a user I want to cancel a reservation • What if I am a premium
so that I avoid being charged full rate
member – do I have
charges?
Confirmation: • When is a non-premium
member charged and
• Verify a premium member how much?
can cancel the same day • How do these vary
without a fee depending on when
• Verify a non-premium cancellation occurs?
member is charged 10% for • Do we need to send the
same day cancellation but user confirmation by
otherwise not charged email?
• Verify an email confirmation • When does the hotel
is sent to user with need to be notified?
appropriate information • What if the user has
• Verify that the hotel is paid a deposit?
notified within 10 minutes
of a cancellation 14
Purpose of confirmation/acceptance
criteria
• define the boundaries for a user story/feature
• help the product owner answer what she
needs in order for this feature to provide value
(typically these are the minimum functional
requirements)
• help the team gain a shared understanding of
the story/feature
• help developers and testers to derive tests
• help developers know when to stop adding
more functionality to a story
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Vertical slices

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Product Backlog
• A list of all desired work on
the project
• Product Backlog Items (PBIs)
– Usually a combination of
• Feature/story-based work (“let user search and replace”)
• task-based work (“improve exception handling”)
• constraints (“10,000 transactions a second”)
• bugs
• List is prioritized by the Product Owner
– “What’s the most important thing we could be doing now?”
– Balance Business Value & Risk
• Initial backlog and ongoing backlog ‘grooming’ 17
Estimation & Planning

Sprint Plan
 Q&A
Fran O’Hara
InspireQS

www.inspireqs.ie
fran.ohara@inspireqs.ie

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