How can you ensure your team is working on the right things with user stories?

User stories are a common way to capture and communicate the needs and goals of your customers in agile methodologies. They are short, simple, and specific statements that describe what a user wants to do and why. But how can you make sure your team is working on the right user stories that deliver the most value and align with your product vision? In this article, we will explore some tips and techniques to improve the quality and prioritization of your user stories.

1 Define your user personas

Before you write any user story, you need to have a clear understanding of who your users are, what they need, and how they behave. User personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers that help you empathize with their problems, motivations, and goals. You can create user personas by conducting user research, interviews, surveys, and analytics. User personas help you write user stories that are relevant, realistic, and consistent.

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Sagar Shah PMP®

LinkedIn Top Agile Voice | Technology Evangelist | IT Consultant | Agile Mentor | Digital Transformation | Prompt Engineering | SAFe - Scaled Agile Framework | Pre-Sales Consultant | RFP Specialist | 10K+ Followers
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Ensure your team is working on the right things with user stories by prioritizing based on business value, collaborating closely with stakeholders, and regularly validating assumptions through feedback. Maintain a shared understanding of project goals and user needs, and conduct regular Sprint Reviews to confirm that delivered user stories align with expectations. Open communication and continuous collaboration are essential to ensuring the team focuses on the most valuable work.

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2 Use the INVEST criteria

A good user story should be INVEST: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable. These criteria help you evaluate and refine your user stories to make them more effective and actionable. Independent means that each user story can be developed and delivered separately, without depending on other stories. Negotiable means that the details and scope of each user story can be discussed and agreed upon by the team and the stakeholders. Valuable means that each user story delivers a clear benefit to the user or the business. Estimable means that the team can estimate the effort and time required to complete each user story. Small means that each user story can be completed within one iteration or sprint. Testable means that each user story has clear acceptance criteria that can be verified and validated.

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Jai Gehlawat

Retail Integrator | Senior Software Development Engineer @ Majid Al Futtaim | Product Owner, Software Development
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Yes, knowledge and time is money. More money invested results in higher returns. My experience shows that writing stories takes up the least amount of time when it comes to the time needed to compile them. Narratives typically focused on present needs rather than expanding to account for future proof.

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3 Prioritize your user stories

Once you have a backlog of user stories, you need to prioritize them according to their importance and urgency. Prioritization helps you focus on the user stories that have the most impact and align with your product vision and strategy. There are many methods and tools to prioritize your user stories, such as the MoSCoW technique, the Kano model, the RICE score, or the value vs effort matrix. The key is to involve your team and your stakeholders in the prioritization process and to review and update your priorities regularly.

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Aleksander Cyrkulewski

Engineering manager with focus on underperforming teams | Engineering Team Lead at Kindred Group
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In my experience, during prioritization process is super-important to remember about the word "no". As the matter of fact, commercial development always want to deliver more than available resources allow for it. So, it's a good real practice to challenge every story with a question "Will there be any harm if we will not deliver it?"

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4 Split your user stories

Sometimes, you may encounter user stories that are too large, complex, or vague to be developed and delivered in one iteration or sprint. In that case, you need to split them into smaller and more manageable user stories that still follow the INVEST criteria. Splitting user stories helps you reduce the risk of scope creep, increase the feedback loop, and deliver value faster. There are different ways to split user stories, such as by workflow, by business rule, by data type, by interface, or by test case.

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5 Validate your user stories

The final step to ensure your team is working on the right user stories is to validate them with your users and stakeholders. Validation helps you check if your user stories meet the expectations and needs of your customers and if they deliver the desired outcomes and benefits. You can validate your user stories by conducting user testing, demos, reviews, or surveys. Validation helps you gather feedback, measure results, and identify improvements for your user stories and your product.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you ensure your team is working on the right things with user stories?

1

2

3

4

5

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1 Define your user personas

2 Use the INVEST criteria

3 Prioritize your user stories

4 Split your user stories

5 Validate your user stories

6 Here’s what else to consider

Agile Methodologies

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How can you ensure your team is working on the right things with user stories?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Define your user personas

2 Use the INVEST criteria

3 Prioritize your user stories

4 Split your user stories

5 Validate your user stories

6 Here’s what else to consider

Agile Methodologies

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