MENU Developing Agile Requirements
How to Employ User Stories to Capture and Test Better Requirements
A Two-Day Seminar
A user story is a brief and clear description of system functionality that is of real value to a user. Written from the users’ perspective, good user stories drive effective requirements development, acceptance testing and ultimately the delivery of value to the customer by the system. In this workshop, you will learn how to write effective user stories and acceptance tests, and how to map your existing requirements processes to an agile approach.
You will also learn a broader Agile framework –including the vision statement, roadmap, and product backlog– that delivers better requirements.
What You Will Learn
Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Explain how user stories affect the agile planning process
- Identify stakeholders and describe user roles and personas
- Develop a meaningful vision statement and roadmap
- Write and evaluate user stories and use cases
- Use alternate styles for documenting requirements (job stories, hypothesis statements)
- Identify and document non-functional requirements and business rules
- Manage changes to agile requirements
- Know when to slice or split user stories
- Manage product backlog
- Explain the characteristics of an effective user representative
- Use lightweight techniques for iterative requirements elicitation
- Conduct story writing workshops using low-fidelity prototypes
- Write acceptance tests scenarios for user stories
- Use agile retrospectives to evaluate and improve iterations
- Prioritize and estimate user stories for iterations and releases
Seminar Outline
I. The Big Picture
- How agile values affect requirements engineering
- The benefits and risks of an agile approach to requirements
- The agile requirements process
II. Defining the Vision
- Roles in agile development
- Identifying project stakeholders
- Defining the project vision
- Agile planning processes
III. Modeling User Roles
- Defining user roles
- Prioritizing user roles
- Developing personas
IV. Writing User Stories
- Guidelines for good stories
- Writing agile use cases
- Capturing other types of requirements
- Managing agile requirements
V. Gathering User Stories
- Lightweight requirements gathering
- Working with user proxies
- Conducting interviews
- Using observation
- Group techniques
- Building low-fidelity user interface prototypes
VI. Testing User Stories
- Writing acceptance tests
- Detecting story smells
- Writing acceptance tests for user stories
- Handling defects
VII. Planning with User Stories
- Planning iterations and releases
- Prioritizing the product backlog
- Estimating with story points
- Using stories to plan releases and iterations
VIII. Workshop Retrospective
- Workshop review
- Agile retrospectives
Who Should Attend
You will benefit most from this learning experience if you are a (an):
- Business Analyst
- Product Manager
- Process Improvement Professional
- Developer, User or Tester who will gather and document requirements using Agile Methods
- Members of an IT Modernization or Innovation team
- IT or Procurement Specialists who is preparing an RFP
Credits: 13 PDUs / 13 CDUs