User Stories

A user story is a simple story that describes a business requirement for a product.

For example:

The structure of a user story

A good user story has three parts:

1. A description of the user of the product
2. A description of what the user requires
3. A description of the benefit to the user

When you write a new user story in Simply Agile, you are automatically given a basic structure:

Try editing the above. As you can see, you don't have to stick to the formula.

Work backwards and focus on the benefit

It can make life easier to write the last section, the benefit, first. If you can't think of a benefit at this point, it's worth considering whether you need the new feature at all.

Describe what the person requires

The second line, “I want to be able to reset my password” is a succinct description of what the user ought to be able to do. Keep it simple here, there's no need to specify implementation details.

Bear in mind that the story can describe a benefit for a group of people. Nothing's stopping you from saying “We want”!

Describe the role of the person

To make your story personal, and more motivational, describe who the person is. You might even use their name if it's a known member of your organisation.

This way, when someone begins to implement the feature described by the user story, they have a good grasp of the target audience.

Try it

Start putting this technique into practice with your free one month trial of Simply Agile.

Why not “tasks”?

Many project management tools use words like “task”. In some cases this is all you want to track.

For driving business requirements, though, we prefer user stories. They force you to focus on the people involved and on what they are trying to achieve.