Product Specifications and Requirements

Writing good user stories is harder than it sounds.

User Stories have the familiar format: "As a 'user' I want to 'perform an action' so I can 'achieve an end result'". This format is so to help product, design, and engineering folks in taking a user-centered approach to design. Janet Taylor proposes that simply relying in this format is not enough, as it is easily misunderstood and misused. The purpose of user stories is to create empathy, and she tells you what to do instead.

The whole point of the user story could be just to trigger a useful discussion.

In an interesting thought process, Daniel Pokrývka breaks down the user story artifact into its elements to identify the essential parts which can be captured. Then, in an attempt to generate a meta-template, priority is given to the value and motivation, then to the usage and user contexts, and finally to the problem. This results in a value story template, or a different approach to understanding user stories.

Learn how a team was able to heal a small part of the business/development divide by listening to users and delivering small incremental work.

Incremental delivery is a concept where value is delivered in stages instead of as a single increment. Steve Kuo shares a real life example as to the difference this approach makes, and how it can improve trust and engagement of the end users. By delivering features that the users leveraged every day, small ideas became big improvements and change became intuitive. A very relatable example of how to evolve simple solutions by increments.

Using a combination of three roadmap practices

Product roadmaps are a great way to track progress, manage expectations, keep people informed and aligned, while fostering transparency. But often the roadmap gets overloaded with features instead of focusing on a high-level, strategic plan for the products' future development. Robbin Schuurman presents three different roadmap practices, with the pros and cons of each, and how to mix them together depending on your needs.

Discussing the expected behavior of a product to prepare a development increment.

User Stories, the description of the next feature increment, are often best seen as a placeholder for a conversation. This conversation should take into consideration all the needed perspectives in order to make informed decisions, contrasting business, technical and quality issues as it progresses. Kent McDonald shares concepts from Behavior-Driven Development BDD to shed a light on what, when and who should be included.