FLOWING VALUE WITH USER STORIES
This 1-day hands-on User Stories training course prepares your team to flow and deliver value.
The User Story technique is the most popular requirements approach used by Agile teams. Unfortunately, many Agile teams use the technique incorrectly by flowing technical tasks (create lambda, write the new API, update the XYZ code, run test cases, etc.) across their Scrum/Kanban board instead of Stories. The Flowing Value with User Stories training course covers how to write valuable User Stories, how to flow them across your Scrum/Kanban board, how to distinguish between User Stories, Enabler Stories, and technical tasks, and where the technical tasks fit in.
Technical tasks in and of themselves deliver zero value. This “pieces and parts” approach in no way communicates value. Technical tasks as work items in a Team Backlog are impossible to decipher by anyone other than the Developers. You can do better!
User Stories are a lightweight approach to capturing the essence of requirements while encouraging conversations to better understand the details. User Stories are written from the User’s perspective, and as such they empathize with the User. User Stories capture the essence of the requirement and facilitate progressive elaboration and ongoing clarification of the requirement. User Stories communicate the VALUE of the underlying work. When we have a Team Backlog with User Stories, then we can flow value across our Scrum/Kanban board. And yes, depending on your Agile tooling, each User Story can include the solution-oriented technical tasks within.
Additional topics include relative size estimation, planning poker, measuring team velocity, use of velocity in planning, and managing dependencies when using User Stories.
To make it real, the course includes exercises throughout where attendees write user stories from their specific work context.
The class instructor has more than 20-years experience using Agile and User Stories. He will share case studies, situational advice, and practical application recommendations throughout the Flowing Value with User Stories course.
To read more about Agile, visit here. To read more about User Stories, visit here. To read more about what all is involved in an Agile transformation, visit here.
What You Receive
- Flowing Value with User Stories workbook
- Readiness to implement the User Story technique in your organization
- Eligibility for 8 PDUs towards continuing education requirements
Outline
- Flowing Value vs. Technical Tasks
- Why User Stories?
- Writing Valuable User Stories
- Writing Valuable Enabler Stories
- High-Quality User Stories (INVEST)
- Estimating User Stories
- Velocity and Planning
- Splitting Large User Stories
- Managing Dependencies with User Stories
- BONUS: Practical Advice, Tips, and Techniques from the Agile World!
Learning Objectives
- Ability to flow VALUE
- Analyze why a high-level lightweight requirements technique is best for changing requirements
- Apply the User Story technique in your work situation
- Apply relative size estimation
- Compare and contrast varying levels of user story quality
- Break down large user stories into smaller right-sized user stories
- Create sprint plans and release plans based on derived velocity
“The introduction of Agile methods had a tremendous impact on our team productivity, and now we are able to demonstrate meaningful progress on our projects every 2 weeks.”
Senior Staff Engineer, Samsung Telecom America