In software development and product management, a user story is one or more sentences in the everyday or business language of the end user or user of a system that captures what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job functio

• User stories must follow the “As A….I need….So I can….” format, and equate to some form of some sort of delivered business value. This includes “Architectural backlog” User Stories.
• User stories must be sized (“points”) based upon relative sizing using the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc…)
• Stale User Stories (3+ releases old) should be re-validated with the business as well as technical team prior to being scheduled
• All user stories must link to a defined Portfolio Management “Feature”. User Stories that are not completed during a normal sprint must be split. This means that a parent User Story is created, and unfinished work is placed in a new child User Story that is planned in the subsequent sprint.

User Story Approvals

• Only Product Owners may create user stories.
• Only Product Owners my “Cancel” a user story.
• Only Product Owners may “Accept” a user story.
• Only Product Owners may “re-open” a cancelled user story.

Example of a Defined User Story

User Story: As a Financial Analyst, I need a report summarizing customer agency business volume with taxes and surcharges so I can reconcile those numbers against pegasys and validate vendor CAF payments.

Acceptance Criteria

• A new Webi report titled “Summary by Agency of Business Volume w/Taxes Surcharges report” available in Business Objects
• The report should include the following fields:
• Agency Code
• Agency Name
• Invoice Date - Fiscal Year
• BV with Taxes
• The report should have a prompt to select a single fiscal year
• Format needs to be a cross-tab
• Data validation against access database
• Report format should match the attached WAN report format provided by ITS

Rally Tip:

Attach any requirements, screen shots, customer feedback, email, picture, or other files related to a User Story directly to the User Story in Rally to provide better traceability and ease of access.

User Story States