How good are the user stories you work with? Do they help the team work well together or are they a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise that waste time and energy? In this session we’ll explore what a good user story should look like and explore why so many of them fail to live up to our expectations. Many years ago Mike Cohn popularised the INVEST acronym to help people write better user stories. Unfortunately, in many cases, it doesn’t seem to have helped. We’ll unpick the acronym and see if we can’t construct a replacement that describes the key elements of a good user story in less ambiguous language.

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INVESTing
in
User Stories

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4. As a <role>
I want to <do something>
So that <I get some value>

5. In order to <get some value>
<role> should be able to
<do something>

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Independent
Nego3able
Valuable
Es3mable
Small
Testable
I
N
V
E
S
T

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Testable
I
N
V
E
S
T

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TDD

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Es3mable
I
N
V
E
S
T

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Story points have no units

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Story points are rela3ve

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Story points
are
team specific

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The people doing the work es3mate
story points collabora3vely

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Velocity is the average number of
story points delivered per itera3on

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Velocity is used to help decide
which stories can be delivered in
an itera3on

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h"ps://es(ma(on.lunarlogic.io/assets/cards-range-8fc41b2e3fd282125f4602a712020204.png

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Small
I
N
V
E
S
T

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Valuable
I
N
V
E
S
T

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Nego3able
I
N
V
E
S
T

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MMFs
Naked Planning
In progress Urgent
Average delivery
(me from here:
?? days

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IndependentI
N
V
E
S
T

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Independent
Dependent

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Independent
Nego3able
Valuable
Es3mable
Small
Testable
I
N
V
E
S
T

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User stories are not requirements.
They are instruments of planning
and should be discarded aDer implementa3on.
h"p://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/07/perlundholm/user-stories-are-not-requirements

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Risk reducerR

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Ignorance dispeller
R
I

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Verifiably deliverable
R
I
V

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Expedi3ous
R
I
V
E

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Backlog Done………..
3 DAYS OR LESS

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Tracer bullet
R
I
V
E
T

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User Interface
Business Layer
Data Access Layer

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Risk reducer
Ignorance dispeller
Verifiably deliverable
Expedi3ous
Tracer bullet
R
I
V
E
T

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User stories should be RIVETing

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Seb Rose
TwiNer: @sebrose
Blog: www.claysnow.co.uk
E-mail: seb@cucumber.io