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Defining user stories

As a [type of user], I can [an action] so that [a benefit/a value]

A user story has 3 key elements to it, the user/role, the action and the intent (benefit/value). We believe that this combination leads to the most clarity between designer, developer, testers, managers and stakeholder. It’s also intended to be the smallest definable unit of work that can provide business value.

Here are some samples:

  1. As a Driver, I can block badly behaved Passengers so they are never shown to me again.

  2. As a Passenger, I can link the credit card to my profile so that I can pay for a ride faster, easier and without cash.

  3. As a Driver, I can add photos of my car in my profile so that I can attract more users.

  4. As a Passenger, I can see several available Drivers so that I can choose the most suitable option for me.

An Epic then is a grouping of a number of user stories. Where possible we like to phrase them in the same way as user stories, just at a higher level. They also get a short summary name so that they can be quickly referred to. So the stories 1 & 3 above might become a “Driver Onboarding” epic phrased as “As a Driver, I can onboard myself so that I am ready to provide rides.”

At Intrepid, we drop the “As a User” portion of the story on entering into Jira in favour of using our “User Roles” field. This is to support multiple user roles having permission to perform the action in the story.

There is a full read here: How to Write a Good User Story: with Examples & Templates (stormotion.io)

This post is in line with the approach we like, with the exception that it doesn’t mention describing Epics with a short summary title + a high level statement in user story format.