How to write a User Story

Despite the fact that user stories play a huge role that previously belonged to requirements specifications, use cases, etc., they still differ in a number of subtle but critical nuances.

User story structure

The text of the user story itself should explain the role / actions of the user in the system, his need and the profit that the user will receive after the story happens

Actor

With an actor, everything is more or less simple. You have highlighted personas, or you have roles and you can easily fit them into the beginning of the story. There is one problem. Take away part of the story about the actor. If history has not lost anything, then this part is useless (look at the 50 quick ideas to improve your user stories article for a relevant example). You have defined roles in the System and realized that there are not very many of them - User, Operator and Admin. And create 100 stories that start out as “As a User I…”. You have multiple sprints closed, with stories starting the same way. Why do you need this? Yes, it is useless.

Act

Probably it is difficult to make a mistake here - this is the essence of the story, “what needs to be done”. What can be improved. There should be one action - the main one. There is no point in describing “authorizing and performing a search” or “specifying search parameters and performing a search”. Indicate the action that you really need. It is important to describe the story at the "WHAT?" does, not "HOW?" This is the main thing in history. Describe the problem, not the solution. It is better to discuss this with the team later and find a more optimal “HOW” -solution.

Value

The main problem with User Story, in accordance with Cracking the PM interview post, is that you always know the first part of the story, but it is always difficult to indicate why it is being done. But this is Scrum, everything should be specified as User story according to the template, and therefore you write “to ...” and some nonsense that you yourself do not believe in. Take this part out of the story. If nothing is lost, then the formalization of value in history was useless. What can be done? Abandon the wording “to”. This is the root of all evil. YES, for some stories you can indicate the value of the story in this format, but not for most. Move from value to impact. Your story doesn't have to have value, but it must have an impact on who the actor is in the story. And already this influence leads ultimately to a goal that is of value to you.

Let's say you create a story - "As an investment analyst, I receive investment report # 17 to make a decision FASTER." My Acceptance Criteria is a metric for value in US. How to measure such a value? How to understand that the analyst made a decision faster? Business management books PDF can be probably the right answer. How do you know at the end that the story is done?

Reworking the story for impact - “As an investment analyst, I get investment report # 17 FASTER.” That is, now this report is generated in 60 seconds. You indicate to the AC that the report should be generated in 15 seconds. In the end, it is clear whether the AC has been implemented, it is clear what influence you had on the work of the analyst.