What are the advantages of User Stories for Requirements?????????
let me tell in detail
User Stories:
User stories are an agile approach to requirements that help shift the focus from writing about requirements to talking about them. Each includes a written sentence or two and, more importantly, a series of conversations about the desired functionality
What is a user story?
A user story is a short, simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system. They typically follow a simple template:
As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>.
User stories are often written on index cards or sticky notes, stored in a shoe box, and arranged on walls or tables to facilitate planning and discussion. As such, they strongly shift the focus from writing about features to discussing them. In fact, these discussions are more important than whatever text is written.
Can you show some examples?
One of the benefits is that they can be written at varying levels of detail. We can write user stories that cover large amounts of functionality. These large user stories are generally known as epics. Here is an example epic from a desktop backup product:
- As a user, I can backup my entire hard drive.
Because an epic is generally too large for an agile team to complete in one iteration, it is split into multiple smaller stories before it is worked on. The epic above could be split into dozens (or possibly hundreds), including these two:
- As a power user, I can specify files or folders to backup based on file size, date created, and date modified.
- As a user, I can indicate folders not to backup so that my backup drive isn’t filled up with things I don’t need saved.
Who writes them?
Anyone can write a story. It’s the product owner’s responsibility to make sure a product backlog comprised of user stories exists, but that does not mean that the product owner is the one who writes them. Over the course of a good agile project, you should expect to have some written by each team member.
Also, note that who writes a user story is far less important than who is involved in the discussions of it.
When are they written?
Stories are written throughout the project. Usually a story-writing workshop is held near the start of the project. Everyone on the team participates with the goal of creating a product backlog that fully describes the functionality to be added over the course of the project or a three- to six-month release cycle within it.
Some of these stories will undoubtedly be epics. Epics will later be decomposed into smaller stories that fit more readily into a single iteration. Additionally, new stories can be written and added to the product backlog at any time and by anyone
Do these replace a requirements document?
Agile projects, especially Scrum ones, use a product backlog, which is a prioritized list of the functionality to be developed in a product or service. Although product backlog items can be whatever the team desires, user stories have emerged as the best and most popular form of product backlog item.
While a product backlog can be thought of as a replacement for the requirements document of a traditional project, it is important to remember that the written part of a user story (“As a user, I want…”) is incomplete until the discussions about that story occur. It is often best to think of the written part as a pointer to the real requirement. A user story could point to a diagram depicting a workflow, a spreadsheet showing how to perform a calculation, or any other artifact the product owner or team desires.
1. Why User Stories?
Because stories exhibit some of the same characteristics of use cases or traditional requirements statements, it’s important to look at what distinguishes stories from these earlier requirements techniques. These differences can lead to many advantages for user stories.
Let’s Be Precise
User stories emphasize verbal communication. Written language is often very imprecise, and there’s no guarantee that a customer and developer will interpret a statement in the same way. For example, at lunch recently I read this on my menu: “Entrée comes with choice of soup or salad and bread.”
That should not have been a difficult sentence to understand, but it was. Which of these did it mean I could choose?
- Soup or (salad and bread)
- (Soup or salad) and bread
We act as though written words are precise, yet they often aren’t. Contrast the words written on that menu with the waitress’ spoken words: “Would you like soup or salad?” Even better, she removed all ambiguity by placing a basket of bread on the table before she took my order.
As another example, I recently came across this requirement, referring to a user’s ability to name a folder in a data management system: “The user can enter a name. It can be 127 characters.” From this statement it’s unclear whether the user must enter a name for the folder. Perhaps a default name is provided. The second sentence is almost completely meaningless. Can the folder name be other lengths, or must it always be 127 characters?
Useful for Planning
A second advantage of user stories is that they can be used readily in project planning. User stories are written so that each can be given an estimate of how difficult or time–consuming it will be to develop; use cases, on the other hand, are generally too large to be given useful estimates. Also, a story is implemented all in a single iteration of an agile project, while it’s common to split a use case across multiple iterations (even though those iterations are usually longer than on a story–driven project).
IEEE 830–style requirements statements (“The system shall…”) represent a different problem. When you consider the thousands or tens of thousands of statements in a software requirements specification (and the relationships between them) for a typical product, it’s easy to see the inherent difficulty in prioritizing them. If the requirements cannot be prioritized beyond the common high, medium, and low, they’re unsuitable for a highly iterative and incremental development process that will deliver working software every two to four weeks.
Spare Me the Details
Stories have additional advantages, but I’ll provide only one more. User stories encourage the team to defer collecting details. An initial place–holding goal–level story (“A Recruiter can post a new job opening”) can be written and then replaced with more detailed stories once it becomes important to have the details. This technique makes user stories perfect for time–constrained projects. A team can very quickly write a few dozen stories to give them an overall feel for the system. They can then plunge into the details on a few of the stories and can be coding much sooner than a team that feels compelled to complete an IEEE 830–style software requirements specification.
2. User Stories Aren’t Use Cases
First introduced by Ivar Jacobsen,2 use cases are today most commonly associated with the Unified Process. A use case is a generalized description of a set of interactions between the system and one or more actors, where an actor is either a user or another system. Use cases may be written in unstructured text or to conform with a structured template. The templates proposed by Alistair Cockburn3 are among the most commonly used. A sample is shown in the sidebar
Use Case 1, which is equivalent to the user story “As a recruiter, I can pay for a job posting with a credit card.”
Use Case 1
Use Case Title: Pay for a job posting.
Primary Actor: Recruiter
Level: Actor goal
Precondition: The job information has been entered but is not viewable.
Minimal Guarantees: None
Success Guarantees: Job is posted; recruiter’s credit car is changed.
Primary Actor: Recruiter
Main Success Scenario
1. Recruiter submits credit card number, date, and authentication information.
2. System validates credit card.
3. System charges credit card full amount.
4. Job posting is made viewable to job seekers.
5. Recruiter is given a unique confirmation number.
Extensions
2a: The card is not a type accepted by the system.
2a1: The system notifies the user to use a different card.
2b: The card is expired.
2b1: The system notifies the user to use a different card.
2c: The card is invalid.
2c1: The system notifies the user to use a different card.
3a: The card has insufficient credit available to post the ad.
3a1: The system charges as much as it can to the current card.
3a2: The user is told about the problem and asked to enter a second credit card for the remaining charge. The use case continues at Step 2.
Within a use case, the term main success scenario refers to the primary successful path through the use case. In this case, success is achieved after completing the five steps shown. The Extensions section defines alternative paths through the use case. Often, extensions are used for error handling; but extensions are also used to describe successful but secondary paths, such as in extension 3a of Use Case 1. Each path through a use case is referred to as a scenario. So, just as the main success scenario represents the sequence of steps 1–5, an alternate scenario is represented by the sequence 1, 2, 2a, 2a1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
One of the most obvious differences between stories and use cases is their scope. Both are sized to deliver business value, but stories are kept smaller in scope because we place constraints on their size (such as “no story can be expected to take more than 10 days of development work”) so that they can be used in scheduling work. A use case almost always covers a much larger scope than a story. For example, looking at the user story “A Recruiter can pay for a job posting with a credit card,” we see that it’s similar to the main success scenario of Use Case 1. This leads to the observation that a user story is similar to a single scenario of a use case. Each story is not necessarily equivalent to a main success scenario; for example, we could write the story “When a user tries to use an expired credit card, the system prompts her to use a different credit card,” which is equivalent to Extension 2b of Use Case 1.
User stories and use cases also differ in the level of completeness. James Grenning has noted that the text on a story card plus acceptance tests “are basically the same thing as a use case.” By this, Grenning means that the story corresponds to the use case’s main success scenario, and that the story’s tests correspond to the extensions of the use case.
For example, the following might be appropriate acceptance test cases for the story “A Recruiter can pay for a job posting with a credit card:”
- Test with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express (pass)
- Test with Diner’s Club (fail)
- Test with good, bad, and missing card ID numbers
- Test with expired cards
- Test with different purchase amounts (including one over the card’s limit)
Looking at these acceptance tests, we can see the correlation between them and the extensions of Use Case 1.
Another important difference between use cases and stories is their longevity. Use cases are often permanent artifacts that continue to exist as long as the product is under active development or maintenance. Stories, on the other hand, are not intended to outlive the iteration in which they’re added to the software. While it’s possible to archive story cards, many teams simply rip them up.
An additional difference is that use cases are more prone to including details of the user interface, despite admonishments to avoid this tactic. There are several reasons. First, use cases often lead to a large volume of paper, and without another suitable place to put user interface requirements, they end up in the use cases. Second, use case writers focus too early on the software implementation rather than on business goals.
Including user interface details causes definite problems, especially early in a new project when user interface design should not be made more difficult by preconceptions. I recently came across the use case shown in the sidebar Use Case 2, which describes the steps for composing and sending an email message.
Use Case 2
Use Case Title: Compose and send email message
Main Success Scenario
- User selects the New Message menu item.
- System presents the user with the Compose New Message dialog.
- User edits email body, subject field, and recipient lines.
- User clicks Send button.
- System sends the message.
User interface assumptions appear throughout this use case: a New Message menu item, a dialog box for composing new messages, subject and recipient input fields in that dialog box, and a Send button. Many of these assumptions may seem good and safe, but they may rule out a user interface in which I click a recipient’s name rather than typing it to initiate the message. Additionally, the use case of Use Case 2 precludes the use of voice recognition as the interface to the system. Admittedly, far more email clients work with typed messages than with voice recognition, but the point is that a use case is not the proper place to specify the user interface in this manner.
Think about the user story that would replace Use Case 2: “As a user, I can compose and send email messages.” No hidden user interface assumptions. With stories, the user interface will come up during the conversation with the customer.
To get around the problem of user interface assumptions in use cases, Constantine and Lockwood4 have suggested the concept of essential use cases. An essential use case is one that has been stripped of hidden assumptions about technology and implementation details. For example, the following table shows an essential use case for composing and sending an email message. What’s interesting about essential use cases is that the user intentions could be directly interpreted as user stories.
| User Intention | System Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Compose email message | |
| Indicate recipient(s) | Collect email content and recipient(s) |
| Send email message | Send the message |
Another difference is that use cases and stories are written for different purposes. Use cases are written in a format acceptable to both customers and developers so that each may read and agree to the use case. The purpose of the use case is to document an agreement between the customer and the development team. Stories, on the other hand, are written to facilitate release and iteration planning, and to serve as placeholders for conversations about the users’ detailed needs.
Not all use cases are written by filling in a form, as shown in Use Case 1. Some use cases are written as unstructured text. Cockburn refers to these as use case briefs. Use case briefs differ from user stories in two ways. First, since a use case brief must still cover the same scope as a use case, the scope of a use case brief is usually larger than the scope of a user story. That is, one use case brief will typically tell more than one story. Second, use case briefs are intended to live on for the life of a product. User stories, on the other hand, are discarded after use. Finally, use cases are generally written as the result of an analysis activity, while user stories are written as notes that can be used to initiate analysis conversations.
User Stories Aren’t Requirements Statements
The Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has published a set of guidelines on how to write software requirements specifications.5 This document, known as IEEE Standard 830, was last revised in 1998. The IEEE recommendations cover such topics as how to organize the requirements specification document, the role of prototyping, and the characteristics of good requirements. The most distinguishing characteristic of an IEEE 830–style software requirements specification is the use of the phrase “The system shall…” which is the IEEE’s recommended way to write functional requirements. A typical fragment of an IEEE 830 specification looks similar to the following:
4.6) The system shall allow a company to pay for a job posting with a credit card.
4.6.1) The system shall accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express cards.
4.6.2) The system shall charge the credit card before the job posting is placed on the site.
4.6.3) The system shall give the user a unique confirmation number.
Documenting a system’s requirements to this level is tedious, error-prone, and very time-consuming. Additionally, a requirements document written in this way is, quite frankly, boring to read. Just because something is boring to read is not sufficient reason to abandon it as a technique; however, if you’re dealing with 300 pages of requirements like this (and that would only be a medium-sized system), you have to assume that it’s not going to be read thoroughly by everyone who needs to read it. Readers will either skim or skip sections out of boredom. Additionally, a document written at this level will frequently make it impossible for a reader to grasp the big picture.
There’s a tremendous appeal to the idea that we can think, think, think about a planned system and then write all the requirements as “The system shall….” That sounds so much better than “If possible, the system will…” or even “If we have time, we’ll try to…” that better characterizes the reality on most projects.
Unfortunately, it’s effectively impossible to write all of a system’s requirements this way. A powerful and important feedback loop occurs when users first see the software being built for them. When users see the software, they come up with new ideas and change their minds about old ideas. When changes are requested to the software contemplated in a requirements specification, we’ve become accustomed to calling it a “change of scope.” This type of thinking is incorrect for two reasons. First, it implies that the software was at some point sufficiently well-known for its scope to have been considered fully defined. It doesn’t matter how much effort is put into upfront thinking about requirements; we’ve learned that users will have different (and better) opinions once they see the software. Second, this type of thinking reinforces the belief that software is complete when it fulfills a list of requirements, rather than when it fulfills the goals of the intended user. If the scope of the user’s goals changes, perhaps we can speak of a “change of scope,” but the term is usually applied even when only the details of a specific software solution have changed.
IEEE 830–style requirements have sent many projects astray because they focus attention on a checklist of requirements rather than on the user᾿s goals. And lists of requirements don’t give the reader the same overall understanding of a product that stories do. It’s very difficult to read a list of requirements without automatically considering solutions in your head as you read. Carroll, for example, suggests that designers “may produce a solution for only the first few requirements they encounter.”6 For example, consider the following requirements:
3.4) The product shall have a gasoline-powered engine.
3.5) The product shall have four wheels.
3.5.1) The product shall have a rubber tire mounted to each wheel.
3.6) The product shall have a steering wheel.
3.7) The product shall have a steel body.
By this point, I suppose images of an automobile are floating around your head. Of course, an automobile satisfies all of the requirements listed above. The one in your head may be a bright red convertible, while I might envision a blue pickup. Presumably the differences between your convertible and my pickup are covered in additional requirements statements.
But suppose that instead of writing an IEEE 830–style requirements specification, the customer told us her goals for the product:
- The product makes it easy and fast for me to mow my lawn.
- I am comfortable while using the product.
By looking at goals, we get a completely different view of the product: the customer really wants a riding lawnmower, not an automobile. These goals are not user stories, but where IEEE 830 documents are a list of requirements, stories describe a user’s goals. By focusing on the user’s goals for the new product, rather than a list of attributes of the new product, we can design a better solution to the user’s needs.
A final difference between user stories and IEEE 830–style requirements specifications is that with the latter the cost of each requirement is not made visible until all the requirements are written. The typical scenario is that one or more analysts spends two or three months (often longer) writing a lengthy requirements document. This document is then handed to the programmers, who tell the analysts (who relay the message to the customer) that the project will take 24 months, rather than the six months they had hoped for. In this case, time was wasted writing the three-fourths of the document that the team won’t have time to develop, and more time will be wasted as the developers, analysts, and customer iterate over which functionality can be developed in time. With stories, an estimate is associated with each story immediately. The customer knows the velocity of the team and the cost of each story.
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