Quite often it’s difficult to get started writing User Stories for the first time. Here are some sample User Stories that may provide some guidance. In general, though, there are a few guidelines you can follow to make a good story:
- Short Title with Active Verb – the title of the story should be at most 5 words, and should contain an active verb. If the title cannot be kept to around 5 words, then the story likely needs to be split into multiple stories.
- Estimable – The developers should be able to understand the story well enough to provide a reasonable estimate. If they can’t, the story should be split or rewritten in order to make it simple enough to be estimated.
- Testable – A story should be simple enough for the team to create automated tests to verify it. If not, it probably needs to be split. Note as well that quite often there is more than one acceptance test per story.
- Written by the Product Owner - The Story authors may be the Product Owner or their Proxy, Domain or Subject Matter Experts, or possibly even the Stakeholders. However, the important point is that people from the Business are the authors of the User Stories.
Examples
Related Content
- User Stories
- Story Estimation
- “Spikes”
- Download our FREE whitepaper, Five Ways to Split User Stories
