Қолданушы әңгімелері: Бағдарламалық жүйе мүмкіндіктерін сипаттау

Informal description of one or more features of a software system

In software development and product management, a user story is an informal, natural language description of features of a software system. They are written from the perspective of an end user or user of a system, and may be recorded on index cards, Post it notes, or digitally in specific management software. Depending on the product, user stories may be written by different stakeholders like client, user, manager, or development team. User stories are a type of boundary object. They facilitate sensemaking and communication; and may help software teams document their understanding of the system and its context.

User stories are written by or for users or customers to influence the functionality of the system being developed. In some teams, the product manager (or product owner in Scrum), is primarily responsible for formulating user stories and organizing them into a product backlog. In other teams, anyone can write a user story. User stories can be developed through discussion with stakeholders, based on personas or are simply made up.

Screening quiz (epic story) As the HR manager, I want to create a screening quiz so that I can understand whether I want to send possible recruits to the functional manager. Quiz recall As a manager, I want to browse my existing quizzes so I can recall what I have in place and figure out if I can just reuse or update an existing quiz for the position I need now. They define the boundaries of a user story and are used to confirm when a story is completed and working as intended. The appropriate amount of information to be included in the acceptance criteria varies by team, program and project. Some may include 'predecessor criteria', "The user has already logged in and has already edited his information once". Some may write the acceptance criteria in typical agile format, Given When Then. Others may simply use bullet points taken from original requirements gathered from customers or stakeholders.

In many contexts, user stories are used and also summarized in groups for ontological, semantic and organizational reasons. Initiative is also referred to as Program in certain scaled agile frameworks. The different usages depend on the point of view, e. g. either looking from a user perspective as product owner in relation to features or a company perspective in relation to task organization. While some suggest to use 'epic' and 'theme' as labels for any thinkable kind of grouping of user stories, organization management tends to use it for strong structuring and uniting work loads. For instance, Jira seems to use a hierarchically organized to do list, in which they named the first level of to do tasks 'user story', the second level 'epics' (grouping of user stories) and the third level 'initiatives' (grouping of epics). However, initiatives are not always present in product management development and just add another level of granularity. In Jira, 'themes' exist (for tracking purposes) that allow to cross relate and group items of different parts of the fixed hierarchy. In this usage, Jira shifts the meaning of themes in an organization perspective: e. g how much time did we spent on developing theme "xyz". But another definition of themes is: a set of stories, epics, features etc for a user that forms a common semantic unit or goal. There is probably not a common definition because different approaches exist for different styles of product design and development. In this sense, some also suggest to not use any kind of hard groups and hierarchies.

Multiple epics or many very large stories that are closely related are summarized as themes. A common explanation of epics is also: so much work that requires many sprints, or in scaled frameworks a Release Train or Solution Train.

Multiple themes, epics, or stories grouped together hierarchically.

Multiple themes or stories grouped together by ontology and/or semantic relationship.

A story map organises user stories according to a narrative flow that presents the big picture of the product. The technique was developed by Jeff Patton from 2005 to 2014 to address the risk of projects flooded with very detailed user stories that distract from realizing the product's main objectives. User story mapping uses workshops with users to identify first the main business activities. Each of these main activities may involve several kind of users or personas. The horizontal cross cutting narrative line is then drawn by identifying the main tasks of the individual user involved in these business activities. The line is kept throughout the project. More detailed user stories are gathered and collected as usual with the user story practice. But each new user story is either inserted into the narrative flow or related vertically to a main tasks. The horizontal axis corresponds to the coverage of the product objectives, and the vertical axis to the needs of the individual users. In this way it becomes possible to describe even large systems without losing the big picture. Story maps can easily provide a two dimensional graphical visualization of the product backlog: At the top of the map are the headings under which stories are grouped, usually referred to as 'epics' (big coarse grained user stories), 'themes' (collections of related user stories) or 'activities'. These are identified by orienting at the user’s workflow or "the order you'd explain the behavior of the system". Vertically, below the epics, the actual story cards are allocated and ordered by priority. The first horizontal row is a "walking skeleton" and below that represents increasing sophistication.

A user journey map intends to show the big picture but for a single user category. Its narrative line focuses on the chronology of phases and actions that a single user has to perform in order to achieve his or her objectives. This allows to map the user experience beyond a set of user stories. Based on user feedback, the positive and negative emotions can be identified across the journey. Points of friction or unfulfilled needs can be identified on the map. This technique is used to improve the design of a product, allowing to engage users in participatory approaches.