Work Different

Anders Ramsay speaking at the Scrum NYC User Group, using a beta version of his Agile 2013 workshop.

My comment: One of the major questions that has come up in training I have personally taken is devs saying the stories are not “detailed enough.” In this talk/workshop Anders presents a way to solve this issue — and make better software by considering UX — using varieties of user stories.

First, elicit Experience Stories that state the problem versus a solution. Experience Stories ask “what is the source problem or goal?” (This is often emotional, not easy estimable, testable, etc.)

Dev Stories answer “What we should build.”

Feature stories answer features we would like.

Not that stories are written three times, but evolve, and even UX has been considered.

Elicit Experience Stories > glue together with UX design

(Anders ran Innovation Game of Speedboat @lukehohmann )

Anders on personna:
– find four or five quirks
– use a person that is *not* an average Joe-Blow
– don’t use a picture, don’t spend time.
– not clinical, scientific, more utilitarian

Use Design Studio
– establish focus and boundaries
– warmup /raw materials
– sketching in a time box
– pitch / critique

Card storming write as many possible features down as possible.

Then based on cards, do story mapping.

UI then shows whats missing and enables effective sizing of stories. Story maps reveal features that should be in UI.

Customers do not know how to size cards. Work with dev to slice features into cards.

Putting “why” at the center gives us the “so that” of a user story.

Size of stories can be confusing. What’s our destination? If too big to decompose.

A vision story has a different purpose.

Level of detail needed is determined by person building it, and juxtaposed with cost.

Could “dot voting” skew? Story points not same. It is about trending in current moment. Story points attach costs.

Anders believes scrum puts too much weight on product owner. Jeff talking about this at Agile 2012. Product owners should be dictators inside a democracy. Democratize prioritization to extent you can. PO should not be writing stories.

Rob Purdie commented: Scrum has demanded PO involvement deeply. Depends on organizational maturity. Otherwise the PO swoops in at beginning / end.

Anders: no matter what PO says, it may not lead to product success. ( Via Lean Startup)