Form Does Not Equal Substance

Just because someone says or writes something in the form of “as a … I need to … because …” does not make it a user story.

Example

If a customer tells you, “As a Customer Service Rep, I need to be able to spell check because we think good spelling shows professionalism,” that does not make it a user story.

Spell checking is a feature!

Not a user story!

What Makes It A User STory?

An example of a user story might be, “As a Customer Service Rep, I need to set the language to English in our spell checker because we send out communication in English in our company.”

A user story is a step along the way. It would be setting something or doing something specific.

A feature is more of a generality.

Then, you have tasks that must occur by a Developer to build the user story (i.e., a step) in the overall feature.

Examples of features in Microsoft Word

  • Spell checking

  • Footers

  • Templates

  • Styles

Example of user stories in Microsoft Word

Setting a language in the spell checker

  • Inserting a page number in a footer

  • Saving a document as a template

  • Setting the spacing for a style

Happy software engineering.