In agile software development, we create user stories as a way to communicate the requirements of our users in an easy to understand format. Usually, they take the following form:
“As a <user type>, I want to <function> so that I can <business value>.”
An example of a real user story looks like this:
“As a frequent traveler, I want to rebook a past trip so that I can save time booking trips.”
Last night I read through the results of a study from Original Software entitled Software Quality and Testing: A CIO Perspective. After I read it, I had to pick myself up off the floor. “Why was Chris on the floor” you ask? Because one of the main findings of the study was that 40% of CIO’s reported a general indifference towards the quality of the software they produce. When directly asked “What is the perceived importance of Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in your organization?” here was how the CIO’s responded:
As I’ve been looking through backlogs from various organizations and teams, I’ve started to notice a trend. Well, less of a trend than finding numerous similarities. The similarities I’m seeing are in the user stories in the backlogs. Many of the backlogs I’ve seen have user stories that say something like “Get smart on the dojo toolkit” or “Find out more about the ASP.NET MVC“. I call them the “Get Smart” stories. The Get Smart stories are stereotyped stories that contain little or no detail. Storyotypes. It’s not that I don’t believe in stories for research spikes. What I don’t like is that these stories don’t follow the simple INVEST rule of user stories. If you’ve never heard of the INVEST rule, it basically says that user stories should be:
As promised last week, here is the download link to the latest Seth Godin Tribes teleseminar featuring:
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If you’d rather not download the MP3, click here to stream audio of the teleseminar instead.
