What makes a good user story?
In summary, what makes a good user story is one that facilitates the collaboration and discussion with the team around the benefit of the functionality to the user. A good user story is well written and at the right level of detail.
A user story is an informal, general explanation of a software feature written from the perspective of the end user or customer. The purpose of a user story is to articulate how a piece of work will deliver a particular value back to the customer.
- Who wants the functionality.
- What it is they want.
- Why they want it.
The most important part is the conversation! This is key because it is so frequently overlooked. A user story is not documentation of the requirements but rather a representation of the requirement.
User stories are part of an agile approach that helps shift the focus from writing about requirements to talking about them. Every agile user story includes a written sentence or two and, more importantly, a series of conversations about the desired functionality.
Perhaps the most important benefit of user stories in agile product development, is that unlike requirements or use cases, user stories are not meant to stand on their own. Instead, each user story is a placeholder for a future conversation with the development team.
User stories help to achieve cross-team clarity on what to build, for whom, why, and when. Since they are easy to define, understand, and revise, they can become the standard way to communicate and summarize the functionality of the product by both technical and non-technical members.
- Story name. You will create multiple user stories through the course of your project, so you need to be able to identify them easily when prioritizing. ...
- User role. Identify the role of the user for whom the story is written. ...
- Achievable action. ...
- Desired business value. ...
- Acceptance criteria.
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. ...
- Working software over comprehensive documentation. ...
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. ...
- Responding to change over following a plan.
- Make sure that it's independent. A user story needs to be able to exist on its own and make sense. ...
- User stories are negotiable. A user story doesn't detail specific features or contain requirements. ...
- User stories need to focus on business value.
What are the 5 elements of a good story?
- Exposition.
- Rising Action.
- Climax.
- Falling Action.
- Conclusion.
To keep your reader engaged and interested, your story should include these plot elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Let's explore each one.

- 1 — A Theme. Plot (#5) is what happens in a story, a theme is why it happens—which you need to know while you're writing the plot. ...
- 2 — Characters. I'm talking believable characters who feel knowable. ...
- 3 — Setting. ...
- 4 — Point of View. ...
- 5 — Plot. ...
- 6 — Conflict. ...
- 7 — Resolution.
Your set of characters is the most important element in your story. While plot is pivotal, setting is fundamental, point of view is necessary, and theme is required, no story element ranks above character. Characters serve as the driving force in your story. Your characters create and push your plot forward.
- Step 1: Outline acceptance criteria. The definition of done is the set of criteria that needs to be fulfilled for your user story to be considered complete. ...
- Step 2: Decide on user personas. ...
- Step 3: Create tasks. ...
- Step 4: Map stories. ...
- Step 5: Request feedback.
- Step 1: Name the epic. Before you can start planning the details of the epic, you need to give it a clear, concise title. ...
- Step 2: Write a narrative explaining the epic. ...
- Step 3: Establish the scope for the epic. ...
- Step 4: Define completion for the epic. ...
- Step 5: Break the epic down into stories.
Bill Wake came up with the INVEST acronym to help us remember guidelines for writing effective user stories: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small, and Testable.
The user story should offer value, both to the team and to your user personas. It should give your team a clear idea of the goals of a feature they have to design and develop. And for the user, it means a product that consistently meets their needs.
- Write short sentences. ...
- Use simple words. ...
- It is easy to measure. ...
- One criterion per line. ...
- Every criterion must have a clear WHY. ...
- Sometimes it is necessary to split into another user story. ...
- Don't be too specific. ...
- Out of scope.
These 3 C's are Cards, Conversation, and Confirmation. These are essential components for writing a good User Story. The Card, Conversation, and Confirmation model was introduced by Ron Jefferies in 2001 for Extreme Programming (XP) and is suitable even today. So, let us examine these 3 C's for writing User Stories.
What are the 3 pillars of Scrum?
Understand Scrum
If you carefully scrutinize scrum, you will find again and again the three pillars of empirical process control: transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
- 1: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. ...
- 2: Working software over comprehensive documentation. ...
- 3: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. ...
- 4: Responding to change over following a plan.
What are examples of Agile frameworks? Scrum is the most common Agile framework. Others include the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Crystal, and Feature-Driven Development (FDD).
You can use endlessly different story structures and styles, but each story or novel is going to boil down to three fundamental elements: character, setting, and plot.
To define four major story elements: character, setting, plot, and theme.
Feature stories are descriptive and full of detail. Feature stories generally have a strong narrative line. Feature stories have a strong lead that grabs readers and makes them want to read on. Feature stories often depend on interviews.
- Character.
- Plot.
- Point of View.
- Setting.
- Style.
- Theme.
- Setting. The setting is the time and location in which your story takes place. ...
- Characters. A story usually includes a number of characters, each with a different role or purpose. ...
- Plot. ...
- Conflict. ...
- Theme. ...
- Narrative Arc.
So, keep in mind that you need a main theme, characters, setting, tension, climax, resolution, plot, purpose and chronology for a powerful story.
There are eight elements of a story: theme, plot, characters, setting, conflict, point-of-view, tone and style.
What are the 5 C's of storytelling?
Following are the 5 C's of storytelling that help improve a story. A good story has a sequence that usually happens in five parts that are called the 5 C's of storytelling: Circumstance, Curiosity, Characters, Conversations, and Conflicts.
A user story should reflect the needs and wants of an individual - who could be a system user, internal team member or customer - and show how the requested functionality will deliver value to this end user. It's important to remember these stories are end goals, not features, and should be written in layman's terms.
Learn about the art of storytelling from the folks at Stillmotion, starting with the four P's of storytelling: People, Place, Plot, and Purpose.
- Great stories are universal. ...
- Great stories have a clear structure and purpose. ...
- Great stories have a character to root for (an underdog) ...
- Great stories appeal to our deepest emotions. ...
- Great stories are surprising and unexpected. ...
- Great stories are simple and focused.
What Makes A Good Short Story? The four elements necessary for your story structure are character, plot, setting, and tension. Balancing these elements is the first step to making your creative writing amazing.