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Training:
Effective User Stories
Our Effective User Stories (EUS) course addresses the heart of communication and collaboration between requesters and responders – typically users and development teams.
During this course you will discover how transformational the User Story technique can be when done as originally intended. Hint: it is far more than a requirement documentation format.
How to solve many communication and collaboration problems using the User Story technique.
Multiple techniques for gathering and refining user stories from initial concept to ready to develop.
How to evaluate and improve the quality of your user stories.
Many practical tips and guidelines on how to avoid common mistakes.
Course Information:
Done well, user stories enable stakeholder-team partnerships with shared interests, a more flexible way of working and a better product with improved return on investment.
During our EUS course you will discover how to take stories from high-level outcomes to items sufficiently detailed to implement without overly specifying the design. You will learn the six attributes all user stories must exhibit as well as the five additional guidelines for taking user stories from good to great.
During our EUS course you will discover how to take stories from high-level outcomes to items sufficiently detailed to implement without overly specifying the design. You will learn the six attributes all user stories must exhibit as well as the five additional guidelines for taking user stories from good to great.
We will also explore the use of user role modelling to identify the initial user stories for a project or product. During this hands-on course, you put theory into action when identifying user roles and telling user stories for multiple case studies.
Come away with practical ways to improve both your process and the clarity of your work items in order to work in a more Agile way and produce better results for your customers and business.
What pre-requisites are there?
None. Some experience with requirement gathering / discovery is beneficial.
Who should attend?
- Product Owners
- Business Analysts
- Scrum Masters
- Agile Coaches
- Individual contributors from all disciplines – ideally full cross-functional teams
- Representative users, subject matter experts or customers who request or collaborate on refinement of changes
What is included when I register?
- 1 full day or 2 half days of highly interactive training.
Course Information:
Sessions are a half day in duration.
- Solving the Communication ProblemLearn solutions to common communication and trade-off problems.
- User Stories OverviewExplore what user stories cover and how to elaborate them with sufficient detail for development.
- User Role ModellingPractice improving shared understanding of your users in a way that can be incorporated into user stories.
- Gathering User StoriesGain multiple techniques for elicitation and determining Epics, Themes and Stories.
- High Quality StoriesUse the INVEST criteria to evaluate and improve your user stories.
- Splitting User StoriesPractice splitting stories via some of more than two dozen splitting dimensions.
- Additional GuidelinesAvoid common mistakes by following practical guidance that go beyond the books.
- Case StudyApply your learning to a product development scenario.
- What User Stories are NotGain awareness how user stories differ from use cases and IEEE 830 specifications.
- QuizCheck your understanding by completing a true/false quiz.
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Learning Facilitator:
Rowan Bunning
Educator and Consultant.
Biography:
Rowan Bunning is a globally recognised educator and consultant in Agile management. He has over 27 years of experience in software intensive project delivery and product development.
In 2008, Rowan founded Adapt WithStyle (formerly Scrum WithStyle) to bring world-class Agile training and independent consulting to south-east Asia. As a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST®) with not-for-profit Scrum Alliance, Rowan has delivered over 530 certification courses including the full three level Path to Certified Scrum Professional® (CSP®) for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches.
Rowan holds a WSQ Advanced Certificate in Learning and Performance (ACLP) from the Singapore Institute for Adult Learning (IAL).
Rowan has played project management roles in the U.K. and Australia. This includes taking a high-profile online business to launch, and safely introducing frequent change to critical infrastructure processing AUD $250 billion worth of financial transactions daily.
Rowan is passionate about developing leaders skilled at developing teams and simplifying their organisations to compete at scale on the basis of agility, innovation and highest customer value.
In 2008, Rowan founded Adapt WithStyle (formerly Scrum WithStyle) to bring world-class Agile training and independent consulting to south-east Asia. As a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST®) with not-for-profit Scrum Alliance, Rowan has delivered over 530 certification courses including the full three level Path to Certified Scrum Professional® (CSP®) for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches.
Rowan holds a WSQ Advanced Certificate in Learning and Performance (ACLP) from the Singapore Institute for Adult Learning (IAL).
Rowan has played project management roles in the U.K. and Australia. This includes taking a high-profile online business to launch, and safely introducing frequent change to critical infrastructure processing AUD $250 billion worth of financial transactions daily.
Rowan is passionate about developing leaders skilled at developing teams and simplifying their organisations to compete at scale on the basis of agility, innovation and highest customer value.
Accreditations:
Frequently Asked Questions:
Why do a whole training course on a simple requirements template?
It is a myth that the User Story technique is merely a template to write requirements in. As you will learn on this course, User Stories are a technique that shifts the way requesters and responders communicate away from written documents (and tickets) to interactive conversations. They also support sharing the highly effective collaboration between requesters and responders, improved Return on Investment, shared incentives around the resource allocation problem, deferring decisions, iterative incremental development and more.
A substantial outcome from this course is to understand these much more substantial shifts in how we work that the User Story technique enables and how to approach taking advantage of these in your work.
What you learn on this course can be the start of solving some important communication and collaboration challenges across team and organisational boundaries.
Is this course only for business analysts and Product Owners?
No. In a self-organising team context, User Stories are not created solely or even primarily by business analysts or Product Owner.
Instead, team members from all disciplines as well as users, subject matter experts and even external customers use User Stories to support interactive communication.
We have User Stories that the team says are not specific enough to implement. Will this course help with that?
Yes. A substantial component of this course is refining User Stories to be both specific/detailed enough for the team to implement and create clear pass/fail tests to validate. We approach this from both a technique angle and a process perspective (who is involved when). We discuss complementary techniques outside of User Stories that help with specifying details collaboratively in a testable form.
Does this offer guidelines for constructing good User Stories and Acceptance Criteria?
Yes. You will practise application of such guidelines during the course. Improving your knowledge and skill in this area can improve your User Stories and Acceptance Criteria straight away after the course.
Is this course aligned with the User Stories Applied book by Mike Cohn?
Yes. Our trainer was licensed by Mike Cohn to teach about user stories for several years. Whilst our course material has changed, it remains fully aligned with Mike’s User Stories Applied book.
Can I earn a certification from this course?
No. If you have a Scrum Alliance certification, your time on this course earns you Scrum Education Units (SEUs) toward renewing your certification.
Does this course involve passing a test?
There is a quiz to check your knowledge. This is not a pass/fail test, but rather a tool to identify what you know and what requires clarification before the course ends.
Contact Us:
Got a question, or need to speak to one of our Learning Facilitators? Contact us today and we'll be happy to help.
1300 172 786