Talk: Telling Better Stories
Speakers directory
Speaker:
David Evans
Talk description
Title:
Telling Better Stories
Short synopsis:
User Stories are one of those things that are enormously useful when described well, and painful when done badly. In my experience of working with a large number of teams, I've seen far more bad stories than good ones. This presentation is intended to give you several ideas to help you improve the way you express Stories. I will talk about the problems arising from slavish and unimaginative adherence to the common "As a..., I Want..., So that..." template. I will examine the deeper structure and elements of stories and how they evolve as ideas. I will also offer tips for using alternative styles of expressing these elements.
Max size: 500 chars
Long synopsis (optional):
If you are using agile, it is almost certain that you are using Stories to describe your Product Backlog items. It is another near certainty that if you are using Stories, you write them down using this format: “As a <user> I want <some software feature> So that <some business value>”. As someone who cares about the state of agile practice, I want to offer some alternatives, so that agile teams remember that the point of the story is in the telling, not the template. The shared understanding comes from the conversation, not the card. By offering you different ways to ‘tell’ the story in its short written form, I hope you will be able to re-ignite a greater level of meaning, interest and engagement in your team’s discussions about the work they are doing to build great software that matters to people. The talk will cover the problems and limitations of slavishly using this (or any other) single template. I will analyse the essential elements of stories, and in particular the concepts of how we use stories as experiments concerning changes within the technical domain of our software and systems, in order to influence and create a positive impact for our customers within the business domain. Given this analysis, we look for better ways in which to express stories in their short written form. I will offer tips on how to phrase different parts of the story in order to maximise shared understanding while keeping the structure terse and encouraging team conversation. I will also share tips on how to identify and express the business value of stories in a consistent way using a Value Map.
Max size: 5000 chars
Tags:
Speaker directory:
Listed in directory
Not listed
Speakers directory