UserStoriesinLeanSixSigmaSoftwareDevelopment.docxVIP

User?Stories in Lean Six Sigma Software Development /members/David-Hallowell/David L. Hallowell February 26, 2010The term “user story” is emerging in the practice of Agile software development, but the notion is very applicable in all types of products and services. A user story is a simple, one-sentence description of what an actor (any person or entity with behavior that expects things of a particular system) would find valuable to be able to do as the actor interacts with a product or service. The simplicity is part of the power. A user story is written in language that the most basic user and most sophisticated system analyst can readily understand?– and which they can review and refine together to reach a shared understanding. That’s a sometimes rare, and always valuable, thing.Examples?of User StoriesA user story is a complete sentence with an actor, a verb and enough context to convey clear meaning. Examples include:“A service technician can anticipate network degradation.”“A patient understands the status of her procedure as she is going through it.”“The search engine suggests alternative spellings that may be more effective.”User?Stories Are Not Use CasesThe focus on verbs makes many people think of use cases. While the verbs and functional view are a common thread, use cases are most often employed to detail requirements into the underlying workflows and exceptions that are implied. In that way, use cases decompose requirements to uncover underlying action that is worth understanding.User stories, on the other hand, are generally more compositional, starting as rough sketches that support the discovery of stated and latent requirements. User stories start with context data and needs data. They may state or imply functionality that should be better understood. A verified and valuable user story may become a requirement. A user story is discovery.Use cases, on the other hand, often start with requirements. Use cases detail workflows, starting conditions and