
What is a User Story? The Card, the Conversation, and the Confirmation Clarified
Understand the power of the 3 C’s – Story Reminder, Story Elaboration, and Story Validation or Confirmation
FREE
Author: Tom and Angela Hathaway
Video Duration: 4:28 minutes
This KnowledgeKnugget™ is part of this eCourse
Udemy Course: How To Write User Stories That Deliver Real Business Value
Learn How to Capture, Write, Prioritize, Rightsize and Split User Stories Plus Acceptance Tests with Given-When-Then Scenarios
The User Story Paradigm Is Lean Requirements Engineering
Taken in the context of a lean or agile software development philosophy, the user story paradigm not only identifies the important questions, is also moves the timing for getting the answers to the last responsible moment when they are most likely to be correct.
User Stories, like Gallia, have 3 parts. For User Stories, the parts are often called the Card, the Conversation, and the Criteria (or Confirmation). This definition goes back to the origins of User Stories in a software development approach called “XP” or “eXtreme Programming”. At that time, User Stories were handwritten on a 3X5 index card.
Today, “the Card” can be in any form (electronic or hand-written). The purpose of the card is to serve as a reminder for an upcoming conversation with the developers.
“The Conversation” is a reminder that the User Story is not a requirement but a trigger for a conversation between the author and developers that should not be scheduled until the developers are ready to start coding whatever functionality the story needed.
“The Criteria” refers to Acceptance Criteria that used to be written on the back of the index card by the developer during the conversation to capture how the author would know whether the story worked once the code was delivered.