Expressing, Managing, and Validating User Stories: Experiences from the Market

Abstract

Agile methodologies for software development favor customer involvement and thus a rapid feedback cycle on realized product increments. Such involvement is implemented in the activities around requirements (elicitation, analysis, development, management, change, validation), which in turn are often sustained by—and expressed in—“user story” format. This paper aims to show our experience in developing software system representing functional requirements mainly with “user stories,” and capturing also nonfunctional requirements (e.g., availability, security) in demanding domains. This paper starts defining what a user story is, how we write and test it, and what are main differences compared to “traditional” documented requirements and use cases. Then, it focuses on techniques we use for splitting and grooming, and how we transform a linear backlog into a multidimensional Story Map that help us to manage size and complexity.