Product Backlog
Start with Epics
An Epic is where you give context. It should contain:
- Description of the Problem or Opportunity
- Evidence of the Problem or Opportunity
- Hypothesis related to it
- Outputs of the Discovery Process
- Design or Mockup
- Metric that we expect to impact with it (the value today and the expected value)
Stories
Stories are items of the Backlog (breakdown of Epics) that give context to what needs to be developed focusing on a narrative around the User. Stories are normally written by Product Managers or Product Owners. There are some techniques we can use to write effective Stories.
Best Practices
Every Story should contain
- Short description (just enough to understand that it is about)
- Business Rules
- Scenarios (not only the main flow but also alternative flows)
- Design / Mockup
- Clear Success Criteria
This needs to be considered when each team creates its own Definition of Done (previous explained in Agile: Ways of Work)
User Story
As a ____ I want to ____ So that ____
Job Story
When ____ I want to ____ So I can ____
| References |
|---|
| Replacing The User Story With The Job Story |
| How we accidentally invented Job Stories (by Intercom) |
BDD
For each Scenario:
Given ____
When ____
Then ____
BDD stands for Behavior Driven Development and works best when combined to a User Story or Job Story to complement and give clarity of all the scenarios involved as well as expected results. BDD might work also as a template for Acceptance Criteria.
| References |
|---|
| Why Behavior Driven Development (BDD) Makes User Stories Even Better |
| GivenWhenThen (by Martin Fowler) |
| Applying BDD acceptance criteria in user stories |
| Getting Started with BDD (Part 1) |
User Story Mapping
User Story Mapping is a dead simple idea. Talk about the user’s journey through your product by building a simple model that tells your user’s story as you do. It turns out this simple idea makes working with user stories in agile development a lot easier. (by Jeff Patton - creator of User Story Mapping) (source: Story Mapping)
| References | Source |
|---|---|
| Getting started with User Story Mapping (audio) | Jeff Patton in Mind the Product |
| The New User Story Backlog is a Map - The original post in 2008 that gave birth to User Story Mapping) | Jeff Patton |
Flat Backlog vs Story Map
User Story Mapping is a better visual representation and a better way to communicate the strategy using the same User Stories (backlog items) we have in our conventional flat backlog.
References
Recommended Books
|
User Story Mapping - by Jeff Patton Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product 
|
