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User story

User story
History[edit] User stories originated with Extreme Programming (XP), whose first written description in 1998 only claimed that customers defined project scope "with user stories, which are like use cases". Rather than offered as a distinct practice, they were described as one of the "game pieces" used in the planning game. However, most of the further literature thrust around all the ways arguing that user stories are "unlike" use cases, in trying to answer in a more practical manner "how requirements are handled" in XP and more generally Agile projects. In 2001, Ron Jeffries proposed the well-known Three C's formula, i.e. A Card (or often a Post-it note) is a physical token giving tangible and durable form to what would otherwise only be an abstraction; The Confirmation, the more formal the better, ensures that the objectives the conversation revolved around have been reached finally. Creating user stories[edit] Format[edit] "As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>" Run tests Or

Agile software development Agile software development is a set of principles for software development in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing,[1] cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change.[2] Agile itself has never defined any specific methods to achieve this, but many have grown up as a result and have been recognized as being 'Agile'. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development,[3] also known as the Agile Manifesto, was first proclaimed in 2001, after "agile methodology" was originally introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The manifesto came out of the DSDM Consortium in 1994, although its roots go back to the mid 1980s at DuPont and texts by James Martin[4] and James Kerr et al.[5] History[edit] Incremental software development methods trace back to 1957.[6] In 1974, E. The Agile Manifesto[edit] Agile principles[edit]

Splitting User Stories Good user stories follow Bill Wake’s INVEST model. They’re Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. The small requirement drives us to split large stories. But the stories after splitting still have to follow the model. Many new agile teams attempt to split stories by architectural layer: one story for the UI, another for the database, etc. This may satisfy small, but it fails at independent and valuable. Over my years with agile, I’ve discovered nine patterns for splitting user stories into good, smaller stories. (Note: As with any pattern language, I didn’t invent these patterns, I’ve just observed and compiled them. How Small? How small should stories be? When you’re in a planning meeting and you hit your trigger estimate, pull out the cheat sheet at the end of this article and try a few of the patterns until you find a good split. Which Pattern to Use You’ll often find that you can split a story using several of the patterns. Pattern #1: Workflow Steps Conclusion

Design Thinking With Persona Manifesto for Agile Software Development INVEST in Good Stories (French) In XP, we think of requirements of coming in the form of user stories. It would be easy to mistake the story card for the “whole story,” but Ron Jeffries points out that stories in XP have three components: Cards (their physical medium), Conversation (the discussion surrounding them), and Confirmation (tests that verify them). A pidgin language is a simplified language, usually used for trade, that allows people who can’t communicate in their native language to nonetheless work together. But what are characteristics of a good story? I – IndependentN – NegotiableV – ValuableE – EstimableS – SmallT – Testable Independent Stories are easiest to work with if they are independent. We can’t always achieve this; once in a while we may say things like “3 points for the first report, then 1 point for each of the others.” Negotiable… and Negotiated A good story is negotiable. Valuable A story needs to be valuable. This is especially an issue when splitting stories. Estimable Small Testable

Personas Website designers often use personas to insure the design will meet users' needs. "A persona is a character sketch that represents a particular segment of the target audience," according to Steve Mulder, author of The User is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. "With personas website designers can focus on how the website will be used instead of how the technology should work. Instead of asking how a feature should work, the designer can ask, 'What would Francis do?'" Seven personas were developed to inform the Library Website Redesign. For those interested, the detailed personas are below: Name: AdeebAge: 20Location: Stanford campus - Toyon Hall (undergrad housing)Job Title: SophomoreWhat types of activities do they do online: Social sites, gaming, movies/music, Google Scholar for research. Find primary sources (pictures from the archives, manuscript - original item); use advanced searchFinds out how many books she has out and when they are due.

The Kaizen Project Whereas the traditional "waterfall" approach has one discipline contribute to the project, then "throw it over the wall" to the next contributor, agile calls for collaborative cross-functional teams. Open communication, collaboration, adaptation, and trust amongst team members are at the heart of agile. Although the project lead or product owner typically prioritizes the work to be delivered, the team takes the lead on deciding how the work will get done, self-organizing around granular tasks and assignments. Agile isn't defined by a set of ceremonies or specific development techniques. Rather, agile is a group of methodologies that demonstrate a commitment to tight feedback cycles and continuous improvement. The original Agile Manifesto didn't prescribe two-week iterations or an ideal team size. Teams choose agile so they can respond to changes in the marketplace or feedback from customers quickly without derailing a year's worth of plans.

Planning poker Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based technique for estimating, mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development. In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates. The method was first defined and named by James Grenning[1] in 2002 and later popularized by Mike Cohn in the book Agile Estimating and Planning,[2] whose company trade marked the term. Process[edit] The reason[edit] The reason to use Planning poker is to avoid the influence of the other participants. Equipment[edit] Planning poker is based on a list of features to be delivered and several copies of a deck of numbered cards. Planning Poker card deck

DIY User Personas | UX Lady Probably you already know what a persona is –if don’t check this -, and probably you, like me, build your first persona using some of the thousands personas layout you can find in the internet. But as has happened to me you’ve probably also discovered this is not easy work… But you know, I love recipes, so here you have my own recipe to build user personas, step by step including 10 elements your persona should have. I create this guideline with the purpose to make the process of create personas a simple fill in the blank work, so I think could be useful for you too. The guideline it is structured in 3 points: How to, with the step by step guide and the Interviews process.Layout, presenting the persona layout I use with 10 basic elements.Elements were I describe in details each one of the elements of the layout and the method used to obtain the information and measuring. Each point follows a What? 1.1 Step by step (Modeling personas) What? A persona should include: Why? How? 3.1 Profile: Why ?

Lean Startup Early business development tool Lean startup is a methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning. Lean startup emphasizes customer feedback over intuition and flexibility over planning. This methodology enables recovery from failures more often than traditional ways of product development. [1] Central to the lean startup methodology is the assumption that when startup companies invest their time into iteratively building products or services to meet the needs of early customers, the company can reduce market risks and sidestep the need for large amounts of initial project funding and expensive product launches and financial failures.[2][3] Overview[edit] Precursors[edit] Lean manufacturing[edit] Customer development[edit] Principles[edit]

Scrum Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing product development. It defines "a flexible, holistic product development strategy where a development team works as a unit to reach a common goal", challenges assumptions of the "traditional, sequential approach" to product development, and enables teams to self-organize by encouraging physical co-location or close online collaboration of all team members, as well as daily face-to-face communication among all team members and disciplines in the project. A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called "requirements churn"), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. Later, Schwaber with others founded the Scrum Alliance and created the Certified Scrum Master programs and its derivatives. Each sprint is started by a planning meeting.

Personas: The Foundation of a Great User Experience Today's consumers are demanding more from companies. Customers expect products, services, and information that are timely and catered to their specific needs and desires. Traditionally, companies develop and market products based on market segmentation and demographics, assuming that the features, functionality and messaging will meet the needs of all of the customers in that demographic—a "one size fits all" mentality. "What Is a Persona? A persona represents a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral patterns in their purchasing decisions, use of technology or products, customer service preferences, lifestyle choices, and the like. How Are Personas Built? Personas are built by first conducting one-on-one interviews with a wide demographic of the targeted audience(s). Analysis is then conducted on the research data over the course of one to two weeks. From here, it's essential to launch another round of research. Where Does Persona Development Begin?

Here's What The Average Tech Startup Looks Like Between reading GeekWire every day, watching the Tech Stars Seattle Demo Day pitches, seeing the latest infographic from Gist, talking to Angels and VCs, and discussions with fellow venture backed entrepeneurs, I have lately been wondering what the “average” tech startup looks like today. It is a lot smaller than I had thought. To help answer this question, I turned to the detailed information published on the Tech Stars web site. This is a treasure trove of statistics, listing 104 graduate startups, from the initial 2007 class in Boulder to the Spring 2011 classes in Boulder, Boston, and New York (including 2010 Seattle, but not the Fall 2011 Seattle graduates). Unfortunately, YCombinator and 500 Startups do not post equivalent data on their 350+ similar graduates, but 104 is quite a good sample size. First to note, is that although Tech Stars is five years old, 84 of the 104 companies listed are less than three years old. Who knew?

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