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INTERVIEW QUESTION:

What are User Stories?

Posted by Adrian M.

// 8505 Views // 1 Additional Answers & Comments

Categories: Agile Methods, Requirements Analysis (BABOK KA)

ANSWER

User stories are one of the primary artifacts of agile and XP (extreme programming) project teams.

A user story is a high-level requirement containing just enough information to help the team produce a reasonable sizing for the requirement. The user story is generally one to two sentences in the everyday language of the user.

Many teams write each user story on small note card in order to ensure that it does not grow to large.

Examples of user stories:

Customers can access the balances of their bank accounts using the on-line system.
Customers can transfer funds between any two accounts.
Customers can close any of their accounts and request the remaining balance be sent to them via check.

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ADDITIONAL ANSWERS / COMMENTS

srikanth posted on Friday, May 16, 2008 10:15 AM

When the time has come for creating user stories,
one of the developers gets together with a customer representative.
The customer is responsible for formulating the user stories.
The developer may use a series of questions to get the customer going, such as asking if some particular functionality is desired, but must be careful not to dominate the idea creation process.

As the customer conceives the user stories, they are written down on a note card with a name and a description which the customer has formulated.
If the developer and customer find that the user story is lacking in some way (too large, complicated, imprecise),

It is rewritten until it is satisfactory. However, it is stressed in XP that user stories are not to be definite once they have been written down.
Requirements tend to change during the development period, which is handled by not carving them in stone.

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