User stories are one of the most visible artefacts of most agile methods and have generated large quantities of expert advice. In my experience, much of that advice is often misinterpreted. In this session, we’ll explore several classic pieces of advice, to see how misunderstandings can lead to bad outcomes, despite the best intentions. The advice we’ll look at relates to: – an acronym: INVEST, created by Bill Wake – a technique: relative estimation (as used in Planning Poker, created by James Grenning) – a template: Connextra (As-A/I-Want/So-That), created by Rachel Davies You’ll leave with a clearer appreciation of user stories and an understanding of just how context-sensitive most advice is.

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Seb Rose
User stories:
from good intentions to
bad outcomes

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As a <role>
I want <goal/desire>
So that <benefit>
Template - Connextra

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Breakout room
Discuss:
• Why do user stories exist?
• What is the Connextra template for?
5 minutes

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Placeholder for a conversa;on

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… to detailed small
increments
From placeholder for a
conversa;on …

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The Connextra
template has let us
forget why user
stories were
invented

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I N V E S T
Acronym

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Independent
Nego;able
Valuable
Es;matable
Small
Testable
I
N
V
E
S
T
Acronym

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Breakout room
Valuable
Define the meaning of :
(in the context of user stories and INVEST)
5 minutes

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Minimum marketable feature (MMF)?
What is value?
Potentially shippable increment?
Demonstrable functionality?
How might these interact with
“Small”???

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Value is anything that:
- increases knowledge
- decreases risk
- generates useful feedback

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INVEST
leaves plenty of
room for
misinterpretation

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Technique -
story points

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- Have no units
- Are rela;ve
- Are team specific
- Es;mated by people doing the work
Story points - refresher

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Story points are rela;ve

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... these studies which have for a few years now
given rise to the claim that "research shows that
people are better at relative than absolute
estimation" do not in fact seem to square with
that claim.
This doesn't entail that relative estimation
doesn't work - only that it is not proven.
http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/relative.html

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Is it small,
or just far away?

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Story points
continue to cause
massive
dysfunction

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Story points - apology

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hHps://esJmaJon.lunarlogic.io/assets/cards-range-8fc41b2e3fd282125f4602a712020204.png
https://estimation.lunarlogic.io/

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Bad outcomes
That doesn’t work here!

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Examples revisited

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No silver bullet
Not only are there no silver bullets
now in view, the very nature of
software makes it unlikely that there
will be any.
Frederick P. Brooks
"No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering,"
Computer, Vol. 20, No. 4 (April 1987) pp. 10-19

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PaNerns can help us filter
•Name
•Problem
•Context
•Forces
•Solution
•Resulting Context
•Known Uses
•Related Patterns
•http://wiki.c2.com/?CanonicalForm
•Context
•Forces

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Takeaways
Understand the
“Why”Always consider
your context
Bad outcomes
don’t mean the
advice was bad

28. Seb Rose
Twitter: @sebrose
Blog: http:/cucumber.io/blog
E-mail: seb@smartbear.com http://bddbooks.com