How to Write a Good User Story: with Examples & Templates

We at Stormotion love Stories. As an Agile-driven Team we actively use them to get a better understanding of what benefits our clients’ products deliver to their end users. They also drive collaboration and creativity, pushing us to non-trivial development solutions.

So today we’re going to share our knowledge and experience on this matter to help you improve your Story-writing skills. Enjoy!

🤔 What is a User Story?

User Stories are one of the core elements of the Agile methodology. However, they’re often jumbled with software requirements which isn’t true. So what is a User Story?

User Story is a small (actually, the smallest) piece of work that represents some value to an end user and can be delivered during a sprint.

In projects like mental health app development, the main aim is to put end users at the center of the conversation, capturing product functionality from their perspective. Thus, developers get a better understanding of what, for whom and why they’re building.

Wow, it’s been said a lot about User Stories. But why are they so important to Agile teams?

👍 What Are the Benefits of Creating User Stories?

If you were ever involved in working with Agile frameworks, you already know that both Scrum and Kanban teams greatly benefit from writing User Stories.

📝 How to Write User Stories: Our Workflow

We’re getting to the most thrilling part of our article. However, before we share our step-by-step instruction on writing a User Story, it’s crucial to figure out 2 essential questions: who and when makes them.

Who is responsible for creating a User Story?

As a rule of thumb, Stories are mainly written by Product Owners since it’s their responsibility to keep the Backlog filled with tasks. Yet, don’t forget that Agile is based on communications and opinions exchange between experts. So...

It doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be written only by a Product Owner. The more people join the conversation, the better.

At Stormotion, Stories are written by all team members who are related to the business-side of the project (sales managers, marketers, a product owner etc.), since it let us look at the future app from the perspective of any potential kind of user. The responsibility of the Product Owner in this case is to confirm that they’re match the INVEST criteria.

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So that’s how to write User Stories in a nutshell. Our Stormotion Squad also uses the following tips when working on this task:

• Start with Epics. It’s usually easier to move from more complex tasks to more specific ones so try writing Epics and then split them into Stories.
• Listen to feedback. Sometimes you don’t need to guess Stories - ask your real end users for feedback and use their ideas as a source of inspiration.
• Don’t introduce details too early. It’s better to hold the brainstorming session before each sprint to discuss how to implement planned Stories.

💡 Conclusion

User Stories are an essential element of the Agile approach that can bring many benefits to your project. However, it’s important to write them correctly which requires some time and skills.

Examples of good User Stories meet the INVEST criteria, meaning that they’re:

• Independent
• Negotiable
• Valuable
• Estimable
• Small
• Testable

The common User Stories template includes the user, the action and the value (or the benefit) and typically looks like this:

As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [a reason/a value]

User Stories can help you to constantly improve the value of your product, estimate development efforts in an appropriate way and prioritize feature development during the MVP and post-MVP stages.