user stories

SCRUM User Stories, Part 2: User value over business value?

Posted on by will

My last post about User Stories and putting the value for the user first in any product decision generated some great discussion on Twitter. As with anything there are some varying views on the topic, and as one example I was pointed to Liz Keogh’s post on user stories.

Liz argues that User Stories should be better named “Stakeholder stories”, as the things you build are addressing the needs of varying groups of stakeholders, only some of which are the end user.

In the creation of any product there are of course many stakeholders who need to be satisfied: the CEO, shareholders, investors, marketing people, the legal department, and so on. In the design of the business, of course the internal stakeholders have the most important requirements. What sort of market are we going into? What segment will we serve? What problem or user need do we attempt to address with this product?

But when you start designing the product that the user will have in their hands, then the user needs to be at the heart of that design solution. Here, the user needs have to come first.

But what about all the stuff that you have to build into products that users don’t want, or even hate? Stuff like CAPTCHAs during registration processes, or advertisements? If the user’s needs come first, why does this stuff exist? To answer this, let’s take a step back and look at where user stories come from.

User Stories are not immaculate conceptions: they don’t just appear out of the blue, but they are thoughtfully created to address needs of the product and the business. On other words, they are derived out of the product vision and the surrounding business model.

If your business model involves monetisation through advertising, then you have a problem to solve: “how can I enable advertising in my product?” It’s clear that the user is not at the heart of the decision to enable advertising, but business models are complex and have to satisfy many stakeholders and solve many problems. At the business strategy level, the end-user is only one of multiple players, and the user doesn’t always come first.

So you have this problem: you have to enable advertising. How do you solve it? Do you slap a full-screen takeover banner for some random personal hygiene product on your start screen? Probably not. Do you enable Google AdWords to show advertisements relevant to the content in a meaningful way? Getting warmer. Do you study the user’s interaction on the page to determine where the advertisements should be placed and how they should be visually displayed to ensure that users understand what is a sponsored link and what is your own content, to avoid frustration and confusion from the end user and maximise the meaning and value they get when they interact with the advertising? Better still.

What is at the heart of each of these decisions? The user. This is where the user comes first – in the design of the solution to the problem. In the User Story.

User-centric design doesn’t absolve you (regrettably) of the need to be aware of the business context or the constraints of your business or industry: it merely proposes that the user is at the heart of how you solve your product problems and how you work with the constraints. Keeping the user at the centre of your user stories by insisting they start with “As a User…” helps you stay focussed on the people who will be interacting with the stuff you’re building.

Better SCRUM User Stories: Connect the story with the real user value

Posted on by will

Everything you do to your product has a reason. There’s a reason that button is blue, or that message contains those words. There’s a reason you display that data or that notification.

Every reason is, at its heart, about the user.

This is why I like using user stories to talk about specific product developments and changes: writing stories reminds us that at every step of the way, everything you do is about your user. Every time you want to change something or add something, you need to understand ‘why’ – why are you adding what you’re adding, and why should the user care.

Connect the user story with the real user value. What the user wants. Not what you want, what marketing wants or what your boss wants – but what the user wants.

Here’s an example of a user story that came across my desk recently:

As a user, when I hover over search results in the search list, I want the pins on the map to change colour.

What’s wrong with this user story? Firstly, it’s a bit ambiguous – which pins?

As a user, when I over over search results in the search list, I want the pin representing that search result to change colour.

Ok, it’s a bit clearer. But is this what the user really wants? I don’t think users have a pin colour problem. What they have is a problem of identifying where the search result is located on the map. The colouring of the pins is a solution, which should be saved for the story specification or acceptance criteria. What the user wants, I think, is this:

As a user, I want to quickly understand where each search result is on the map relative to the other search results.

Clear. But why? Why does the user really want this? Understanding the why helps us understand how to solve their problem. That’s where the second, and often forgotten, part of the user story comes in: the ‘so that’ part:

As a user, I want to quickly understand where each search result is on the map relative to the other search results, so that I can get a feeling for where the place is relative to me or some other point.

Now we are at the core of what the user really wants, and we can go on to design a solution that solves this user problem. This process of story refinement gives us a better understanding of the true motives of the user: the ‘why’.

If you find that you’re looking at a user story that contains more problem specification than solution, keep refining until you get to the real user value; what the user really wants.

Better scrum user stories: Split stories horizontally, not vertically

Posted on by will

Teams often run into trouble in a sprint when they’re trying to work with poorly split stories. Stories that are too big, too small, confusing or that mix the problem with the solution…

We should split stories into small, discreet chunks of functionality. A single story should generally be the smallest discreet piece of functionality that adds business value. What is sometimes forgotten is that a single story should also have a complete user experience flow – it should bring the user from a determined start point to a complete, useful end.

When splitting large user stories down into smaller ones, remember to ensure the story captures a complete user flow. When splitting, think splitting horizontally, not vertically.

A horizontally split story will show a single flow, or path, through a user journey. (For example, a payment process that covers the simplest functionality, a single payment type, inability to modify your order, etc. The options are very limited, but the user is able to reach a useful end – ie, they can pay for something.)

A vertically split story will show multiple paths through a flow, but will stop before the flow can reach a useful end. (For example, a payment process that covers, at once, all the different payment methods that you ultimately want to support, but not the surrounding user flow.)

The problem with splitting vertically instead of horizontally is that vertical ‘strips’ have the entire complexity of the full, complete solution, but you lose the ability to test the whole flow properly. It is also far more tempting to dive into a pie-in-the-sky architecture discussion because to build all the full options for this one strip requires an understanding of all the inputs and outputs of the flow – most of which probably don’t exist yet.

An incomplete flow not only adds no user or business value to your product, but it’s very difficult for teams to build effective solutions for incomplete flows. Think and split in terms of thin, horizontal flows, and increase complexity with additional horizontal ‘layers’ (additional stories).