User Stories Applied

Posted on January 6, 2014

I’ve only scanned a small amount of User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn but I like some bits of this book.

  • You want to keep the user interface out of your stories for as long as possible

    Stories are about requirements, talk implementation later.

  • Don’t number story cards

    Hopefully that’ll mean you won’t use Jira

  • The main purpose of the card is as a reminder to talk about the feature

    Its not to be a mini specification document

Its a symptom of corporate agile to add more to everything. Add more to the story, add more depth and scope, add a tracking system, add more process. In my limited experience the smaller startup removes this. In this leaner world we remove scope and depth to create a minimum viable product, reduce process to a minimum and empower people to do their roles and yet have input into the product.  Keep things as simple as possible in order to increase throughput and achieve a viable output as soon as possible. In short, work as a team.