assignment user stories

• Agile project management
• User Stories

User stories with examples and a template

User stories are development tasks often expressed as “persona + need + purpose.” 

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Summary:  A user story is an informal, general explanation of a software feature written from the perspective of the end user. Its purpose is to articulate how a software feature will provide value to the customer.

It's tempting to think that user stories are, simply put, software system requirements. But they're not. 

A key component of agile software development is putting people first, and a user story puts end users at the center of the conversation. These stories use non-technical language to provide context for the development team and their efforts. After reading a user story, the team knows why they are building, what they're building, and what value it creates. 

User stories are one of the core components of an agile program. They help provide a user-focused framework for daily work — which drives collaboration, creativity, and a better product overall.

What are agile user stories?

A user story is the smallest unit of work in an agile framework. It’s an end goal, not a feature, expressed from the software user’s perspective.

A user story is an informal, general explanation of a software feature written from the perspective of the end user or customer. 

The purpose of a user story is to articulate how a piece of work will deliver a particular value back to the customer. Note that "customers" don't have to be external end users in the traditional sense, they can also be internal customers or colleagues within your organization who depend on your team.

User stories are a few sentences in simple language that outline the desired outcome. They don't go into detail. Requirements are added later, once agreed upon by the team.

Stories fit neatly into agile frameworks like scrum and kanban . In scrum, user stories are added to sprints and “burned down” over the duration of the sprint. Kanban teams pull user stories into their backlog and run them through their workflow. It’s this work on user stories that help scrum teams get better at estimation and sprint planning, leading to more accurate forecasting and greater agility. Thanks to stories, kanban teams learn how to manage work-in-progress (WIP) and can further refine their workflows.

User stories are also the building blocks of larger agile frameworks like epics and initiatives. Epics are large work items broken down into a set of stories, and multiple epics comprise an initiative. These larger structures ensure that the day-to-day work of the development team (on stores) contributes to the organizational goals built into epics and initiatives.

Learn more about epics and initiatives

Why create user stories?

For development teams new to agile, user stories sometimes seem like an added step. Why not just break the big project ( the epic ) into a series of steps and get on with it? But stories give the team important context and associate tasks with the value those tasks bring.

User stories serve a number of key benefits:

• Stories keep the focus on the user. A to-do list keeps the team focused on tasks that need to be checked off, but a collection of stories keeps the team focused on solving problems for real users.  
• Stories enable collaboration. With the end goal defined, the team can work together to decide how best to serve the user and meet that goal.  
• Stories drive creative solutions. Stories encourage the team to think critically and creatively about how to best solve for an end goal.  
• Stories create momentum.  With each passing story, the development team enjoys a small challenge and a small win, driving momentum.  

See how user stories work in Jira

Working with user stories

Once a story has been written, it’s time to integrate it into your workflow. Generally a story is written by the product owner, product manager, or program manager and submitted for review.

During a sprint or iteration planning meeting, the team decides what stories they’ll tackle that sprint. Teams now discuss the requirements and functionality that each user story requires. This is an opportunity to get technical and creative in the team’s implementation of the story. Once agreed upon, these requirements are added to the story.

Another common step in this meeting is to score the stories based on their complexity or time to completion. Teams use t-shirt sizes, the Fibonacci sequence, or planning poker to make proper estimations. A story should be sized to complete in one sprint, so as the team specs each story, they make sure to break up stories that will go over that completion horizon.  

How to write user stories

Consider the following when writing user stories:

• Definition of “done” — The story is generally “done” when the user can complete the outlined task, but make sure to define what that is.  
• Outline subtasks or tasks — Decide which specific steps need to be completed and who is responsible for each of them.  
• User personas — For whom? If there are multiple end users, consider making multiple stories.  
• Ordered Steps — Write a story for each step in a larger process.  
• Listen to feedback — Talk to your users and capture the problem or need in their words. No need to guess at stories when you can source them from your customers.  
• Time — Time is a touchy subject. Many development teams avoid discussions of time altogether, relying instead on their estimation frameworks. Since stories should be completable in one sprint, stories that might take weeks or months to complete should be broken up into smaller stories or should be considered their own epic.  

Once the user stories are clearly defined, make sure they are visible for the entire team.

User story template and examples

User stories are often expressed in a simple sentence, structured as follows:

“As a [persona], I [want to], [so that].”

Breaking this down: 

• "As a [persona]": Who are we building this for? We’re not just after a job title, we’re after the persona of the person. Max. Our team should have a shared understanding of who Max is. We’ve hopefully interviewed plenty of Max’s. We understand how that person works, how they think and what they feel. We have empathy for Max.
• “Wants to”: Here we’re describing their intent — not the features they use. What is it they’re actually trying to achieve? This statement should be implementation free — if you’re describing any part of the UI and not what the user goal is you're missing the point.
• “So that”: how does their immediate desire to do something this fit into their bigger picture? What’s the overall benefit they’re trying to achieve? What is the big problem that needs solving?

For example, user stories might look like:

• As Max, I want to invite my friends, so we can enjoy this service together.
• As Sascha, I want to organize my work, so I can feel more in control. 
• As a manager, I want to be able to understand my colleagues progress, so I can better report our sucess and failures. 

This structure is not required, but it is helpful for defining done. When that persona can capture their desired value, then the story is complete. We encourage teams to define their own structure, and then to stick to it.

Getting started with agile user stories

User stories describe the why and the what behind the day-to-day work of development team members, often expressed as persona + need + purpose . Understanding their role as the source of truth for what your team is delivering, but also why, is key to a smooth process.

Start by evaluating the next, or most pressing, large project (e.g. an epic). Break it down into smaller user stories, and work with the development team for refinement. Once your stories are out in the wild where the whole team can see them, you’re ready to get to work.

Related resources

• Project Planning Resources
• Product Launch Resources
• Project Management Go-To-Market Strategies
• Resource Management Resources
• Task-Tracking Resources
• Marketing Project Management Resources
• Program Management Resources
• Resources for Project Managers
• Software Project Management

As a self-proclaimed “chaos muppet” I look to agile practices and lean principles to bring order to my everyday. It’s a joy of mine to share these lessons with others through the many articles, talks, and videos I make for Atlassian 

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1. 🤔 WHAT IS A USER STORY?

PRODUCT STRATEGY

User Story How-to-Write Guide with Examples and Templates

Published: August 22, 2024

14 min read

Andrii Bondarenko

Content Team Lead @ Stormotion

In this article, you'll learn:

🤔 What is a User Story?

👍 what are the benefits of creating user stories, 📝 how to write user stories: our workflow, 🤔 the pitfalls of overusing the user story template, 💡 conclusion.

When you start to dive into Agile software development, the first thing you notice is how user-centered this top approach is. It shifts the focus from just coding and designing to delivering real value to your end users, stakeholders and business in general.

Agile are an essential component of this ideology that lets you define the capabilities your product will bring to your target audience (and, eventually, how it will boost your KPIs and other metrics).

Story Card help to constantly improve the value of your product to the end users, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction.

( image by Aleksandar Savic )

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 and to collaborate effectively with our colleagues. They also drive collaboration and creativity, pushing us to develop better user stories and non-trivial solutions.

So today, we're going to share our knowledge and experience on how to write user stories, provide a summary, and help you improve your story-writing skills. Enjoy!

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 single sprint. These are often referred to as smaller user stories to emphasize their compact nature.

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

Story Card help understand what value a product provides to its end users.

( image by Duo )

Great user stories follow the the top INVEST set of criteria by Bill Wake, which helps to develop robust user-centered products:

• I ndependent – they can be developed in any sequence and changes to one User Story don’t affect the others.
• N egotiable – it’s up for the team to decide how to implement them; there is no rigidly fixed workflow.
• V aluable – each User Story delivers a detached unit of value to end users.
• E stimable – it’s quite easy to guess how much time the development of a User Story will take.
• S mall – it must complete the entire development cycle from design and coding to testing within a single sprint.
• T estable – there should be clear acceptance criteria to check whether a User Story is implemented appropriately.

The User Story format (which is used by the Stormotion team as well) is a simple description that is quite plain and short:

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

Looks like nothing difficult, huh? Here are a few User Stories examples and use cases that fit some made-up taxi app project:

• As a driver, I want to block badly behaved passengers so that I can visualize a safer and more pleasant passenger list .
• As a passenger , I want to link the credit card to my profile so that I can pay for a ride faster, easier and without cash .
• As a driver , I want to add photos of my car in my profile so that I can attract more users .
• As a passenger , I want several available drivers to be displayed so that I can choose the most suitable option for me .

Sounds quite easy but story development isn’t often that simple. Yet, later on, we’ll share some of our proven tips that will help you make only good shots.

User Story example for websites.

( image by Philipp Kühn )

Is there something else?

Despite we’ve just figured out that Agile are independent and should be understood as totally separate units of work, sometimes they’re grouped together to streamline the development process. So when working with them you are likely to meet and use the concept of an Epic . What is it?

An Epic is a high-level body of work that bands together with a group of related Stories. The definition of an Epic helps in understanding its scope and relevance.

We at Stormotion use Epics to describe more complex tasks and structure work in a clear hierarchy, allowing for easier management of development and delivery of new value to the users while working towards a bigger goal. Yet, the User Story format itself stays the same.

The hierarchy of Epics and Stories ( image by Atlassian )

Let’s learn how they compare to the User Story format:

Imagine that you’re building a dating app. In this case, good Epic and User Story examples (but don’t take them too seriously) will be:

So, Epics provide us with a simple description and a high-level view of our goals and how we’re moving towards them. It also helps us during the prioritization process since we can check which Epics require our attention the most and, therefore, which Stories should be implemented first.

How to Prioritize the Feature Development

Oh, one more thing!

Don’t forget to add an acceptance criteria .

A collection of requirements used to validate when a story is finished is called an acceptance criteria.

Every story should have clear acceptance criteria to visualize its successful implementation.

( image by Hai Peng )

Also, these conditions provide us with a deeper and better understanding since they include key info on how Stories perform and allow us to incorporate user feedback. Let’s reuse one of the User Story examples from the beginning of the article:

As a passenger, I want several available drivers to be displayed so that I can choose the most suitable option for me.

What acceptance criteria can be applied to this Story?

• The app shows drivers that were online within last 20 minutes and don’t have an ongoing ride.
• The app shows only 5 drivers that are closest to the user.
• A customer can browse profiles of these drivers, including their photos and rates.

As you can see, now we not only know the value of this Story to users but also capture a clear picture of some key characteristics that require special attention during implementation.

However, you're free to choose how detailed your acceptance criteria will be. It can range from "just let it work in any convenient way" to even more detailed sets of conditions than in the example above.

That's greatly depends on your development team so there's no "correct answer". If your team needs guidance and clear, with-no-room-for-interpretation tasks you'd better stick with detailed instructions on how stories should perform. Otherwise, the "just get it done" approach may work as well.

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

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.

User Stories provide benefits for all kinds of Agile Teams ( image by Andrew McKay )

In Kanban, teams accumulate Stories in a Backlog and then run them one by one to support the work-in-progress flow. This aids in maintaining focus and raising development team KPIs.

Teams using Scrum (which is what we often do at Stormotion) adore User Stories as well. We actively use them to make estimations, prioritize and plan sprints which helps us stay agile and flexible to any changes. This is especially beneficial when we’re working with Startups that are at the MVP-Stage and have limited resources before pitching their project to Angel Investors.

Stories are actively used by Kanban teams as well ( image by Tahir Yousaf )

Except for the above-mentioned, there are some vivid benefits that are common to all Agile teams:

• Keep you focused on the business value. It helps to make your app not only well-built from the technical perspective but also useful to the end users.
• Enable creativity. Since it contains a minimal amount of info, your team is free to drive creative ideas to find the best solution to implement a Story.
• A more manageable project. It's much easier to create small, meaningful Agile User Stories than to tackle big, complex tasks. This is what Stormotion knows about.
• They inspire the team! Every developer loves this sweet feeling of a small win which motivates him to work even harder.

Now let’s dive into the process of creating User Stories!

Project Discovery: What's and Why's?

We’re getting to the most thrilling part of our article. Before we delve into our step-by-step instruction on how to write a User Story, let's first address two essential questions: who writes them and when ?

Who is responsible for creating a User Story?

When it comes to how to write good user stories, as a rule of thumb, Stories are mainly crafted by Product Owners since it’s their responsibility to keep the Backlog filled with tasks. Yet, don’t forget that Agile is based on communication and exchanging opinions 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 manager, marketers, product owner, product manager, 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 or Product Manager in this case is to confirm that they’re match the INVEST criteria.

Stories are created through collaboration ( image by Dmitrii Kharchenko )

When are User Stories created?

A Story-writing meeting in our HQ is usually held near the start of the project . We prefer to gear ourselves up to make sure that a project goes well from the first day to the last.

Later on, we’re able to use our Scrum User Story list to prepare more detailed estimates (for example, by the end of the Discovery Stage), prioritize feature development for sprints and so on.

How to Estimate Software Development Time Accurately?

Also, we supplement the original list as we work on a project with new stories to stay up-to-date with our client’s requirements.

What are the steps to write great Agile User Stories?

First, let us remind you of a common good User Stories template:

Seems short and easy to write. By the way, you're welcome to create your own User Story template. When it comes to how to write a User Story, we at Stormotion follow a specific workflow that helps us deliver the best Stories:

• Create a list of your end users. Identify their "pains" and "needs" that you can help solve.
• Consider the next actions they might take.
• Determine what value this will bring to the user and, of course, to your product. Also, ask yourself – will any party pay us for this?
• Discuss the implementation strategy and acceptance criteria that will be optimal for you.

Let’s look them over now!

Step 1: Think of the “Who”

This is the first and, perhaps, the most fundamental step in writing user stories. Before writing a User Story you should actually know who the end users of your product are. And more important - what needs they have, which you are trying to cover.

In our Story-writing seminars, we make an effort not to employ roles like "the user." It is applicable to everyone, from administrators to consumers, thus it doesn't represent the personalities of certain target groups or how they use the program.

It's important to correctly define your user persona ( image by Grzegorz Oksiuta )

If you want to achieve really great results you may want to dive into your audience even more. Instead of just naming users after their role (for example, “a driver”) try to create some kind of a buyer persona.

Here are a few more tips from our own experience:

• It’s all about the user. Not about developers. And even not about a Product Owner. Each Story should be valuable to some group of your end users.
• Don’t think of users only as external customers. It’s true that your Stories will be mostly about them. But it’s also true that you have to consider internal users such as admins, editors etc.
• Feel some empathy. Give your “user” a name. Think of his mobile habits, what issue your app is going to get resolved for him and how you’re going to make this path easier and faster. Remember some people who you know from the real life and who fit this portrait; feel how you relate to this target group.

Step 2: Think of the “What”

So, now we have several groups of end users. The next step is to determine what features each user expects and how they will interact with the application.

Then you should find out how users are going to interact with your product ( image by Johny vino™ )

Key rules for writing actions in Kanban or Scrum User Stories:

• Stick to one action per Story. For instance, instead of "as a customer I want to browse items and add them to the cart," it's better to split it into 2 separate Stories.
• Focus on the intention, not the feature. Rather than saying "I want to manage my profile," create User Stories like “I want to be able to register,” “I want to upload my profile photo,” “I want to link my credit card to my profile” - each Story adds unique value.
• Keep it concise. Users aren’t interested in the technical details, so avoid including them.
• Avoid describing UI. Since Stories are negotiable, refrain from detailing the user interface. Save these discussions for later.

Step 3: Think of the “Why”

What benefit or value will users receive? This is what our step 3 is dedicated to. It may seem insignificant, but in fact, defining the value is a key aspect of developing user stories.

Pay attention to how users interact with your application ( image by Andrew McKay )

However, your [so that] section should always align with your metrics and KPIs. It should aim to enhance the UX, boost retention rates, shorten the user's path to resolving issues, or achieve similar objectives. Each Story should add value to the overall goal of your product .

If you can't explain the value this feature brings to end users and your product, then something is wrong.

Here are some examples of User Stories for our ongoing project, a meal ordering software, that have clear value:

• As a customer, I want to receive notifications about new hot offers so that I never miss the best deals. [How it affects KPIs: users receive notifications ➡️ they use the app more frequently ➡️ retention rate increases].
• As a restaurant manager, I want to add photos to dish descriptions in the menu so that they look more appealing to customers. [How it affects metrics: users appreciate being able to see photos ➡️ sales increase ➡️ your revenue grows].

Step 4: Discuss a Story

Finally, we always discuss User Stories after they’ve been created. Even if it seems like nothing to talk about.

Don't underestimate the importance of the brainstorming session ( image by Monika Pola )

During this Q&A session, we ask the author of the Story to provide more details or clarify something if needed. It helps us understand how it should work and agree on acceptance criteria. This way we review all mobile app user stories examples one by one.

Then we hold a brainstorming session with the whole team working on the project. It allows us to find out the best ways to implement good User Stories from the tech perspective.

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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, often breaking down stories into manageable subtasks:

• Begin with the Epics. Try creating epics and then breaking them up into little pieces since it's typically simpler to go from more complicated jobs to more focused ones.
• 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 provide too many specifics immediately. It is preferable to have a brainstorming session to discuss planned story implementation before to each sprint.

For a deeper understanding of the user story, we asked our project manager Sergey Ninoshvili to elaborate more on The Pitfalls of Overusing the User Story Template and our company's philosophy.

The user story template makes it easy to structure everything you see into a who-what-why format. However, this template is sometimes abused, leading to user stories that don't make sense. Despite the title of the methodology - Agile - sometimes it seems like following the template is all that matters. For instance, how would you write a User Story about passing CAPTCHA on a website? Isn't it annoying to fill in CAPTCHA? Do users see the benefit or just accept it as a needed step?

As a User, I want to go through the CAPTCHA verification step, so that I know the website is not full of malicious bots (?)

In reality, users rather couldn't care less about it, but it might be still required in some cases. It's just one simple example from the technical side that should rather be a task to implement than a User Story with obscure "want" or "why" parts in it. Good User Stories aren't meant to replace technical requirements, instead they are complement each other.

The origin of the User Story idea takes place in Kent's Beck book on Extreme Programming and it is about moments we all have at some points in our life: when we are excited about something that makes our life more convenient and we want to share it, to tell a story about it. And if the story ends on the "telling" part - it's probably boring, otherwise, there are follow-up questions and a whole conversation takes place.

Traditional requirements were supposed to be written precisely, and a person who reads them was supposed to understand them right. It didn't work that way, and User Stories don't do that trick either, instead they are supposed to inspire conversation. In that conversation participants can reach a shared understanding and agree on the end product vision, eliciting Acceptance Criteria.

That's our goal at Stormotion. To not just follow a template, but to inspire a conversation, to emphasize problems and solutions, instead of wrapping requirements into User Story format. This way we help tell a story of the product, decompose it into small User Stories we can work on, and make this story a real-world user experience.

User Stories are an essential element of the Agile approach that can bring many benefits to your project, especially when they include user feedback and clear use cases. 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:

• I ndependent
• N egotiable

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 top value of your product, estimate development efforts in an appropriate way and prioritize feature development during the MVP and post-MVP stages.

If you have any questions about how to write a user story or what a user story is, feel free to reach out to us! We'll be happy to help you understand these concepts and create User Stories for your project.

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Questions you may have

Take a look at how we solve challenges to meet project requirements

How do User Stories facilitate collaboration between cross-functional teams in Agile environments?

User Stories provide a user-centric framework that keeps the team focused on delivering value to the user, promoting collaboration among team members by ensuring everyone understands the user’s needs and goals.

How can User Stories be integrated into user experience (UX) design processes?

User Stories can guide UX design by defining audience personas and their needs, allowing designers to create solutions that directly address user requirements and ensure the product’s usability aligns with user expectations.

What role do User Stories play in managing technical debt during software development cycles?

User Stories help prioritize work, including addressing technical debt, by making sure each increment of development provides clear user value and aligns with overall product goals, preventing the accumulation of unresolved technical issues.

How can teams leverage User Stories to enhance sprint planning and retrospective meetings?

User Stories help break down work into manageable pieces for sprints, enabling better estimation and planning. During retrospectives, teams can review completed stories to discuss how to create user stories, what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve future sprints.

What are the best practices for incorporating non-functional requirements into User Stories?

Non-functional requirements should be included in the acceptance criteria during user story creation, ensuring they are testable and prioritized by the Product Owner alongside functional requirements to deliver a complete and quality user experience.

How can User Stories be effectively used to negotiate scope changes with clients?

User Stories facilitate scope negotiation by clearly defining what is to be delivered and the value it provides, making it easier to discuss changes with clients and prioritize work based on business value and user impact.

What are innovative tools and techniques for tracking the impact of User Stories on project outcomes?

Tools like JIRA and Trello can be used to track User Stories, while techniques like story mapping and using metrics to measure user satisfaction and business outcomes help in understanding the impact of each story on the overall project.

Can User Stories be adapted for maintenance and operational projects, and if so, how?

Yes, User Stories can be adapted for maintenance by focusing on user needs related to system stability and performance. Stories can be written to address specific operational issues, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with user expectations.

What strategies can ensure User Stories remain user-centric in complex system integrations?

Maintaining a clear focus on the end-user by continually refining user personas, involving users in the feedback process, and ensuring that each story delivers tangible user value helps keep User Stories user-centric in complex integrations.

How can international multi-site teams best collaborate on crafting and implementing User Stories?

International teams can use collaboration tools like video conferencing, shared documentation, and agile project management software to ensure everyone is aligned on user needs. Regular cross-site meetings and clear communication channels are crucial.

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User Stories in Agile - How To Write With Examples

User stories play a crucial role in Agile methodologies, serving as the smallest unit of work and expressing the end goals from the user's perspective. They bridge the gap between technical requirements and the needs of the end-users, making them an essential tool in product development.

This article will guide you through crafting compelling user stories, providing practical examples to inspire your Agile team. We'll explore steps to create user stories, from outlining acceptance criteria to investing in their development, ensuring that your product meets the needs of its users.

What are user stories?

User stories are a fundamental building block in Agile methodologies, providing a simple and straightforward way to describe a software feature from an end user's perspective. They focus on the value that the user will gain from the feature rather than getting bogged down in technical details.

A user story is typically expressed in a simple sentence, following the format: "As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [a benefit/a value]." This helps to keep the focus on the user's needs and encourages the team to consider the functionality from the user's perspective.

The INVEST principle is a widely accepted set of criteria for writing good user stories:

• Independent: It must be independent; it shouldn't rely on another story.
• Negotiable: You can always rewrite and change user stories until they become part of an iteration.
• Valuable: A user story must offer value to an end user.
• Estimable: At any time, you must be able to evaluate the size of a user story.
• Small: Don't make your user story big; otherwise, it will be impossible to plan, task, and prioritize.
• Testable: The user story should offer the necessary information to make test development possible.

Purpose of User Stories

User stories serve multiple purposes in Agile development as a vital tool for ensuring that the end product aligns with the user's needs and expectations. The key purposes they serve are:

• Communication and Understanding: User stories facilitate communication between the development team and stakeholders. They help to ensure everyone has a clear, shared understanding of what is to be achieved and why it matters.
• Focus on User Value: By framing features in the context of user needs, user stories ensure that the project stays focused on delivering real value to the end user.
• Simplicity: User stories are designed to be simple and concise, cutting through non-technical language to express what the user wants in plain language.
• Prioritization and Planning: User stories can help prioritize features based on their value to the user. They also assist in planning by providing a clear view of what needs to be done.
• Flexibility: User stories are flexible. They can be rewritten or split into smaller stories as needed, enabling the team to adapt to changes quickly.
• Testability: With clear criteria defined, user stories provide an excellent basis for creating test cases. They help ensure the resulting feature works as intended and meets the user's needs.

Who Creates User Stories in Agile?

In Agile development, user stories are typically created by the product owner . He is responsible for understanding the needs of the end users, stakeholders, and the business and translating these into user stories that the development team can work on.

However, it's important to note that while the product owner is primarily responsible for creating user stories, this is often a collaborative effort. The development team, stakeholders, and sometimes even the users themselves can contribute to creating user stories.

Who Accepts User Stories in Agile?

The development team presents the completed work to the product owner during the sprint review. At this point, the product owner reviews the work against the defined acceptance criteria. The product owner accepts the user story workflow if the work meets these criteria. If it doesn't, the story may be moved back to the product backlog for further work in a future sprint.

How to Write User Stories?

Writing user stories is a key part of Agile development. Here are the steps you can follow to create effective user stories:

• Understand Your User: Start by identifying and understanding your user. Create personas that represent different user types for your product or service.
• Define What They Want to Do: List the tasks they want to accomplish with your product or service for each persona.
• Write the User Story: Use the standard format: "As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [a benefit/a reason]." This keeps the focus on the user role, their needs, and the value they get.
• Define Acceptance Criteria: You must meet these conditions to complete the story. They offer clear guidance on what is expected from the feature and how it should behave.
• Prioritize Your User Stories: Some stories have different importance. Prioritize them based on their value to the user and business and the feasibility of implementation.

A typical user story includes:

• Title: A short, descriptive name for the story.
• Description: The user story itself is written in the standard format.
• Acceptance Criteria: Specific conditions must be met to complete the story.
• Story Points: An estimate of the effort required to complete the story. This is typically determined using Planning Poker, where team members make estimates using cards with values representing complexity and effort.

User Story Structure

The recommended structure for writing user stories follows the Role-Feature-Reason format. This is a simple yet effective way to frame the functionality and value of a feature from a user's perspective.

This refers to the type of user who will use the feature. It could be a specific user persona or role within your user base.

This is the action or capability that the user wants to perform or have. It should be described in terms of what the user wants, not system functionality.

This is the benefit or value that the user will get from the feature. It explains why users want this feature and what they hope to achieve.

User Story Syntax

The syntax for writing a user story in Agile development typically follows the formula: "As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason]." This structure helps to keep the focus on the user and their needs. Let's break down each part:

"As a [type of user]": This segment represents the person or role using the feature. It's important to specify this to clarify who the functionality is being built for. For example, "As an administrator..."

"I want [some goal]": This part expresses the user's action or what they want to achieve. It describes the feature from the user's perspective. For example, "...I want to be able to create new user accounts..."

"so that [some reason]": This final segment provides the context and justifies why the user needs this feature, i.e., the benefit they expect to gain from it. For example, "...so I can give new employees access to the system."

User Story Description

User story descriptions provide more context to the user story and help the development team understand the requirements better. They often include the following elements:

• Title: A brief, concise summary of the user story.
• Narrative: This is the user story itself, following the format: "As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some reason]."
• Acceptance Criteria: Detailed conditions must be met for the story to be considered complete. They act as a checklist that confirms the story's functionality.

Story Mapping

Story mapping is a technique that provides a visual representation of the user journey through a product based on user stories. It's a helpful tool for understanding the bigger picture, prioritizing work, and planning releases.

Here's how you can create a story map:

• Identify User Tasks: List all the tasks a user would need to complete to achieve their goal with your product or service.
• Arrange Tasks Into a User Journey: Place the tasks along a horizontal line in the order in which a user would complete them. This forms your backbone.
• Break Down Tasks Into User Stories: Write any related user stories for each task and place them vertically under the relevant task. These are your branches.
• Prioritize User Stories: Determine which stories are most critical to the user journey and move them to the top of their respective branches. These become your walking skeleton, representing the minimum viable product.

User Story Components

User stories in Agile are a way to capture the product's desired functionality from the end user's perspective. They typically consist of three main components:

• The Card: This is the written user story, usually on a physical card or a digital equivalent. The card contains the basic narrative. This keeps the focus on what the user wants to achieve and why.
• The Conversation: This component refers to the discussions about the user story. Conversations help clarify the requirements and ensure that everyone on the team understands the story. These conversations can also add additional notes or diagrams to the card.
• Confirmation: The acceptance criteria determine when a user story is done. They define the specific requirements that must be met for the story to be considered complete.

Story Cards in Agile

Story cards (index cards) are a traditional and popular tool in Agile methodologies. Each card contains a single user story, making them easy to handle, arrange, and rearrange as needed.

Cards are typically physically on a board in the team's workspace, visually representing the product and current sprint backlog. They can be moved around to indicate progress, from 'To Do' to 'In Progress' to 'Done.'

The front of the card usually contains the user story and a unique identifier. At the same time, the back can be used for additional details, such as acceptance criteria, notes from conversations, and any other relevant information.

User Story Examples

Developer user stories.

As a software developer, I want an integrated development environment (IDE) that can detect syntax errors to write code more efficiently and with fewer errors.

User Story in Business Analysis

As a project manager, I want a tool that can track project progress and alert me when tasks are falling behind schedule so that I can proactively manage resources and timelines.

Website User Story

As a blog reader, I want to be able to leave comments on articles so that I can engage with the author and other readers.

How to write good user stories?

Write good user stories by focusing on best practices and how you can avoid common pitfalls.

User Story Best Practices:

• User-Centric: User stories focus on the needs and goals of the end users, ensuring that the features being developed provide value and address their pain points.
• Independent: Each user story is self-contained and independent of other stories, allowing for flexibility in prioritization and implementation.
• Specific and Measurable: User stories are clear and specific, with well-defined acceptance criteria allowing easy evaluation and testing.
• Small and Iterative: User stories are small enough to be completed within a single sprint or iteration, enabling faster feedback, iteration, and value delivery.
• Collaborative: They encourage collaboration between stakeholders, product owners, and development teams, fostering shared understanding and collective decision-making.
• Prioritized: User stories are prioritized based on business value, user impact, and project goals, enabling teams to focus on the most important features first.
• Estimable: User stories are estimable, allowing the team to estimate the effort, complexity, and resources required for implementation, aiding in planning and prioritization.
• Testable: They have clear acceptance criteria defining a successful outcome, facilitating effective testing and validation.
• Valuable: Each user story delivers value to the end users or stakeholders, aligning with the overall vision and objectives of the project.
• Emergent: User stories are open to refinement and adaptation as new insights, feedback, or changes in requirements emerge during the development process.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid in User Story Creation

• Writing Too Detailed Stories Too Early: Details should be discovered closer to development.
• Leaving Out the 'Why': The purpose behind the story (the 'so that' part) is crucial because it provides context and helps prioritize.
• Not Involving the Team: The best user stories are written collaboratively, with input from the whole team

Types of User Stories

• Functional User Stories: Describe features or functions that directly interact with users. E.g., "As a user, I want to save my shopping cart."
• Non-Functional User Stories: Define system qualities like performance and security. E.g., "As a user, I want my data to be encrypted."
• Technical or Infrastructure User Stories: Focus on system-level concerns, usually written by developers. E.g., "As a developer, I want to refactor the codebase."
• Constraint User Stories: Outline restrictions or limitations. E.g., "The system must support 2000 concurrent users."
• Business Rule User Stories: Describe rules that the system must conform to. E.g., "As a manager, I want to approve all refunds."
• User Persona Stories: Based on specific user personas, focusing on their unique needs. E.g., "As a new user, I want a tutorial."
• Epic User Stories: Large user stories that need to be broken down into smaller stories. E.g., "As a user, I want a personalized dashboard."
• Spike User Stories: Used to research or create a proof of concept. E.g., "Research ways to integrate with the payment gateway."

What Is a User Story in Agile?

A user story in Agile is a tool that captures a software feature from an end-user perspective, focusing on the user's needs and the value they would get.

What Is a User Story in Scrum?

In Scrum , a user story is a functional increment of work used to break down the work into manageable chunks that deliver value to the user.

What is a Kanban User Story?

In Kanban , user stories help visualize the workflow. They represent individual pieces of work that move across the Kanban board as they progress.

Prioritizing and Managing User Stories

When it comes to prioritizing user stories in the product backlog, several techniques can be used.

• Stack Ranking: This technique involves taking the list of items that need prioritization and ranking them from the most important to the least important. The items at the top of the stack are given the highest priority.
• Kano Model: The Kano Model is a technique that helps prioritize user stories based on their impact on customer satisfaction. It categorizes user stories into different categories, such as basic expectations, performance factors, and delighters.
• MoSCoW Method : MoSCoW stands for Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have. This technique involves categorizing user stories based on their importance and urgency. Must-have stories are given the highest priority, while won't-have stories are deprioritized.
• Bucketing System: This technique involves organizing items on the backlog into buckets or categories based on their themes or priorities. This helps in better organization and decision-making when prioritizing user stories.

When it comes to tools you can use to manage user stories, ActiveCollab has shown amazing results. It manages stories by providing a user-friendly interface to create and prioritize them. It enables collaboration and communication among team members through comment sections.

Tasks can be assigned to team members with due dates for accountability. Progress tracking and reporting features help monitor project milestones and performance.

User Story Board

User storyboards are visual tools used to track the progress of user stories through different stages of development. They typically consist of columns representing the various stages, such as "To Do," "In Progress," and "Completed." User stories are cards that move across the columns as they progress.

By using user storyboards, teams can quickly assess the status of each story, identify bottlenecks, and prioritize work effectively. It provides a clear visual representation of the workflow, improves communication, and helps team members stay aligned throughout development.

Burn-down Chart and Burn-down Rate

A burn-down chart is a visual representation that tracks the progress of work completed against time during a project. It helps teams monitor and manage their progress toward completing the project's tasks or backlog items. The chart consists of two axes: the x-axis represents time, divided into iterations - the number of stories per sprint, while the y-axis represents the remaining work or effort.

As the team completes tasks, the chart's line or curve should gradually slope downwards, indicating the reduction in remaining work over time. By the end of the project, the chart should reach zero, indicating that all planned work has been completed.

On the other hand, the burn-down rate measures the pace at which work is being completed. It represents the rate at which the remaining work is decreasing over time. A steep slope indicates a fast rate, while a shallow slope suggests slower progress. By monitoring the burn-down rate, teams can assess if they are on track to complete the work within the desired timeframe or if adjustments need to be made to meet their goals.

Benefits of Using User Stories

• Increased flexibility: User stories allow for adaptable planning and prioritization, enabling teams to respond to changing requirements effectively.
• Improved product quality: User stories focus on end-user needs, leading to a better understanding and delivery of valuable features.
• Enhanced customer satisfaction: By capturing user requirements and feedback, user stories help ensure the product meets customer expectations.
• Better project control: User stories provide clear visibility into project progress, making tracking and managing tasks easier.
• Faster ROI: Prioritizing user stories based on value allows teams to deliver high-impact features earlier, leading to faster return on investment.
• Reduced risks: User stories promote incremental development, minimizing the risk of developing unnecessary or low-value features.
• Higher team morale: User stories foster collaboration and empower teams, increasing motivation and productivity.

Challenges Associated with User Stories

• Simplification of complex features: User stories need help to capture complex requirements' intricacies, leading to oversimplification.
• Ambiguity, if not well-defined: Insufficiently detailed user stories can result in misunderstandings and confusion among team members.
• Risk of scope creep: User stories can expand beyond the original project scope without proper control, causing delays and resource overruns.
• Potential for neglecting technical tasks: User stories primarily focus on user needs, overlooking important technical considerations or infrastructure improvements.
• Difficulties in scaling for larger projects: Managing and coordinating numerous user stories can become challenging as project size and complexity increase.
• Reliance on continuous stakeholder involvement: User stories require ongoing collaboration with stakeholders, which can be challenging to maintain in certain situations.
• Misinterpretation of user needs: Ambiguities or a lack of clarity within user stories can lead to misunderstandings and deviations from user expectations.
• Overemphasis on short-term goals: User stories often prioritize immediate deliverables, which may hinder long-term planning or strategic decision-making.
• The challenge in integrating with non-agile methods: Incorporating user stories into non-agile processes can pose integration challenges and require adaptation.
• Inconsistency in story point estimations: Estimating story points accurately across different user stories can be challenging, leading to inconsistencies in work effort estimations.

User Story Breakdown

User story breakdown divides a user story into smaller, more manageable tasks or sub-stories. It involves decomposing the user story into specific, actionable steps that the development team can work on. The purpose of breaking down user stories is to ensure clarity, facilitate implementation, and enable better estimates and track progress.

During the breakdown process, the development team collaborates to identify the individual tasks or sub-stories required to fulfill the user story's objectives. These tasks should be small enough to be completed within a single Iterative refinement or sprint. They should also be well-defined, independent, and testable.

By breaking down user stories, teams can:

• Gain a deeper understanding of the work involved: Breaking down user stories helps uncover hidden complexities and dependencies, allowing for more accurate estimation and planning.
• Facilitate collaboration and delegation: Smaller tasks are easier to assign to individual team members, promoting parallel work and reducing bottlenecks.
• Improve estimation and tracking: Breaking down user stories allows for more granular estimation and better progress tracking, as each task can be individually estimated and completed.
• Enhance flexibility and adaptability: Smaller tasks enable teams to respond to changes and adjust priorities more effectively during development.
• Enhance transparency and communication: Breaking down user stories promotes clear communication between the development team and stakeholders, as the breakdown provides a detailed view of the work being done.

Fundamentals of Agile Project Management

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20 User story examples and best practices

Need a little help writing your user stories? Get your team on the right track with these awesome user story examples!

How do you begin designing a successful app or website that’s going to be a hit with your users? User stories are your best friend when combined with a wireframe tool !

Prototype and test new web and mobile apps today. It's free!

What is a user story?

Benefits of user stories, the user story layout, how to write efficient user stories, acceptance criteria for user stories, user stories in agile projects, user stories, personas, scenarios, and storyboards: what’s the difference, 20 useful user story examples, the wrap-up.

User stories help us fit our user personas into the context of the product we’re designing. While the bio of a user persona describes their life and woes, the user story describes how they use a feature of your product – in layman’s terms!

In the agile environment, Product Owners, along with UX designers, tend to write user stories on index cards to be passed around the design team and spark conversation. We might also write them up digitally, using Office or Google Docs to be included in the Scrum backlog.

The fact they are written in simple language and devoid of all technical jargon means the design team feels less restricted by technicalities. They have more opportunity to be creative with their feature design ideas. Read on for some great user story examples!

A user story is a brief description of what a product needs to do, who it’s for, and why it’s needed. Usually, it’s written in one or two sentences and follows a simple format to make it easy to understand and act on. A typical user story looks like this: “As a ( user persona ), I want (an action) so that (a benefit/a value).” This structure helps teams understand what the user needs without getting into technical details.

Working with user stories has several proven benefits, which is why many agile teams across the world adopt them. Here are some of the key reasons why agile teams prioritize user stories.

Break work into manageable tasks

One of the main benefits of user stories is breaking down ambitious and huge product scopes into smaller, more achievable feature sets. User stories are simply a short statement of the user’s goals in their own words. They assist groups in avoiding being mired in details and protocols, and technicalities and procedures.

Organize agile sprints

User stories are brilliant at helping teams prioritize which features to build first. When used as backlog items, they make it easier to organize and divide tasks or feature requirements into sprints. This is crucial for efficient user story writing and user story agile practices.

Provide testing criteria

User stories give agile teams concrete criteria to test against. Each story should have a clear, demonstrable result, ensuring that the user story meets the desired outcome. This helps teams measure performance and outcomes more effectively during each sprint.

Prioritize work to maximize profit

User stories help identify the value that certain features will offer users. Agile teams can focus on the most important and immediate features needed upfront, leading to more efficient and profitable work for clients and stakeholders, while also benefiting the user.

Reduce technical jargon and spur creativity

Because user stories lack the technical jargon found in many other product development documents, they open the team up to more creative speculation. This fosters a more creative and flexible dialogue between development and design teams. With user stories, the emphasis is shifted from features and technical details to the viewpoint of the user and potential uses for the product. Non-technical stakeholders who wish to know which features are being worked on and the project’s direction should also find this method to be very helpful.

Bring user personas and user story mapping to life

User stories can bring user personas to life, involving these fictional yet real-life-based personas in the project. It’s like having representatives of thousands or millions of users guiding the development team on what they need, rather than the team simply imagining it. User stories can combine to form user story maps, a productive agile technique where all stories are organized to create a development timeline and a priority list.

The way agile teams write user stories often varies across different organizations and teams. To successfully write user stories, you should always take the following elements into account to provide a comprehensive picture for your team of what exactly is needed at each stage of the product development:

• User • Action • Benefit

With these three elements, you can write up a brief user story regarding the feature ( product requirement ) your persona needs and why they need it. We normally write the user story with the following structure:

As a ____ user, I want to ____ so that I can ____.

Let’s say you want to create a social driving app that lets drivers see where their friends are. It also lets them post updates about traffic delays, accidents or weather patterns using their voice. You might fill in the above structure like so:

"As a community user , I want to notify my network about icy roads so they don’t have the same near miss as me ."

You might then include what’s called an acceptance criteria (which we’ll delve into more detail on below) that lists out the technical specifications required to ensure the user’s needs are being met. These might include the following:

• App should recognize the user’s voice command to start a new post
• App should read user’s post back to them
• App should ask user to confirm they want to publish
• Notifications should be sent to friends on the network

But what about when you need to write more than one user story, for example? After all, your app or website will have multiple features and your user stories will be short. How do you categorize them into sub-features? The answer is by writing epic stories.

Epic user story examples

Epic stories help you paint a broader picture by summarizing a complex action composed of smaller actions. In this sense, the epic user story is like an overview of a product feature. Epic stories are written the exact same way as user stories, just less specific. Here’s an example:

“As a user , I want to manage my profile to make sure it’s always up-to-date . “

This epic user story example can then be subdivided into more specific user story examples for the same app, like the following:

“As a backpacker , I want to be able to change my profile photo quickly and easily to represent the new country I’m in .”

Note: “As an influencer , I want to be able to tag my location in any post so my chosen companies get extra footfall .”

Bad user story example

Lastly, you should always write your user stories from your user persona’s point of view. For example, don’t write a story that, in order for it to be tested, another feature would need to first be developed or designed.

When you do this, you stray into dangerous territory which, in the agile world, is called “deadlock”. This is very similar to “checkmate” in chess. It’s where you have nowhere to go. Starting Agile author, Mark Shead, gave the following example of a vague and poorly written user story during his video Agile User Stories :

“As a developer , I want a database with all the tables to model the data so I can store information the application needs .”

In this case, the database would already need to exist, making the outcome of the user story (storing information) codependent on the database.

Many teams that get user stories wrong often end up in this deadlock or doldrums. The client asks them for an update, and they reply by saying that in order to begin developing the app, they must first finish off the “setup work”. But “setup work” should ideally never exist. If user stories can’t kick off the action from the start, then you’re probably doing it wrong.

Great user stories can stand alone independently and also blend in well with others to give a picture of an overall product. Sometimes an idea may not be bad, it’s just presented poorly, as is the case with the poorly written user story example above.

Define your user personas

First of all, and above all else, before you go about writing up your user stories, it’s vital that you carry out the appropriate user research and define your user personas. Why? Because it’s exactly these user personas who your user stories will be based on.

User personas are the first step to when it comes to writing a successful user story because if you don’t know who the user is, how is it possible to write your story from the user’s point of view?

Remember the 3 Cs

When it comes to the user story writing technique, there are three basic requirements to keep in mind before getting started. Or, if you are trying to sell the idea to other stakeholders. These are known as the 3 Cs :

• Conversation
• Confirmation

The whole point of user stories is to provide a simple statement on a card. Quick and easy. The next “C” is Conversation – the whole point of user stories is to spark creative conversation and collaboration among agile teams. Lastly, the final “C is “Confirmation” which refers to the acceptance criteria that we can test once we’ve built the user story feature.

Use the INVEST method

The INVEST method is a great rule of thumb to guide you towards writing the best user stories possible. The INVEST method is a mnemonic for the following best practices:

Independent

User stories, although often included in epics, should be understandable as stand-alone pieces as well.

User stories should offer a large degree of flexibility. This is why they shouldn’t include specific technicalities. Afterall, flexibility is the nature of the scrum environment.

The user story should offer value, both to the team and to your user personas. It should give your team a clear idea of the goals a feature should accomplish when they design and develop it. And for the user, it means a product that consistently meets their needs.

It should be possible to estimate the amount of work needed for a feature proposed in a user story. This will help you assign the relevant scrum points to the backlog task and manage time effectively.

A user story should be short and memorable. Just two lines about what that user wants to achieve with a specific feature of your product. If it is an overall description of your app or category of features, then write an epic and break it down into sub-stories.

The user story should ideally fit into one iteration. You also shouldn’t mention any specifics about UI design in a user story.

Like with most things in the development process, your user stories should be easily testable with clear deductible metrics for key performance indicators. This is usually where the acceptance criteria come into play.

Have a template handy

Next, the best thing that we can advise when it comes to regularly writing great user stories is to use a template. It’s a brilliant way to ensure that you and anyone on your team who writes user stories is always covering the who, the what, and the why. These are the details you need to ensure you capture all of the necessary information in the most concise way possible.

There are many useful digital templates out there that can also be printed off or used in Jira or another kanban system. But the great thing is that templates can also have many other fields that can be useful, such as scrum points and an area to write your acceptance criteria.

Using a template for epics that is composed of many sub-stories can also be a great way to organize a series of micro-features revolving around one greater macro-feature.

Write candidate stories

Candidate stories are an optional step when it comes to writing user user stories. These are the stories that your team writes first to kick off the process when you’re trying to ascertain what it is the user wants based on their personas.

This optional step can be a great way to brainstorm using physical index cards in a meeting. Candidate stories don’t even need to follow the typical structure of real user stories. Successful candidate stories that your team produces can then be further developed into the real user stories.

Acceptance criteria are essential for user stories. They specify what needs to be done for a story to be considered complete, ensuring the product meets user needs.

The main purpose of acceptance criteria is to outline the conditions that must be met for a user story to be accepted. They help make sure everyone, from users to developers, understands what the finished product should do.

Formats of acceptance criteria

There are a few ways to write acceptance criteria. One popular method is the Given/When/Then format:

• Given a specific situation,
• When something happens,
• Then a certain result should follow.

Another simple method is the Checklist. Here, you list out all the conditions that need to be met in bullet points. This approach is clear and easy to use.

Best practices for writing acceptance criteria

Write acceptance criteria in a straightforward and clear way. Make your language understandable. Ensure that the requirements can be put to the test in order to quantify and validate them. Involve every member of the team in the process to obtain their opinions.

Including well-defined acceptance criteria in your user stories improves your user story writing. It provides clear guidelines for development and testing, making sure the final product meets user needs. This is an important part of the user story agile method, helping projects stay on track and aligned with user goals.

One way to decide if a user story feature is testable is to write acceptance criteria for each one you create. Sometimes, the acceptance criteria might include a list of several variables that must be true after the feature is developed. An example might be:

“As a user , I want to be able to link up my Google account so that I can sign in more easily in the future”.

The acceptance criteria could be something like the following:

“After registering, user should be shown an option on the login screen to log in with their Google account.”

Sometimes, just from reading the user story itself, it might be obvious what the acceptance criteria should be. However, no matter how short or how long, it’s always good practice to write out your acceptance criteria. This prevents your team from falling into lazy habits and never writing any. It’s best to already be thinking of the acceptance criteria when you’re writing your user story.

If you can’t think of acceptance criteria then that means the feature cannot be tested. This means you might want to rethink that particular feature.

If, on the other hand, you find that the acceptance criteria is too long to even be included on an index card, then you should consider breaking it up into another user story or perhaps it should be an epic story instead. These are all things you can think of when it comes to writing acceptance criteria.

User stories are like the heart of a team project, guiding them to focus on what their customers truly want by turning big ideas into small, doable steps.

These user stories are written from the user’s perspective, making sure the team understands what the user needs and why. This keeps everyone focused on creating a product that truly serves its users.

How user stories guide agile projects

User stories are like building blocks, added to the team’s overall task list. The person leading the team then decides which stories matter most to their customers, figuring out which ones should be tackled first. When the team gets together to plan, they choose the stories they’ll focus on next from this master list.

Each story has a set of conditions, like a checklist, that must be met before the story is considered “done.” This makes sure everyone agrees on what finished work looks like, keeping the bar high throughout the project.

Benefits of using user stories

User stories offer some big wins for agile projects. They break down large projects into smaller, more doable tasks, making it easier for the team to stay organized and on track. This means more gets done and things move faster.

They also make communication a whole lot easier, both within the team and with others involved in the project. Simple language ensures everyone understands the project goals and what needs to be done, keeping everyone on the same page.

What’s more, user stories foster collaboration among team members. They initiate discussions about the most effective ways to achieve desired outcomes, generating innovative ideas and solutions. This collaborative approach ensures the product adapts and evolves based on real user needs and feedback.

Examples of user stories in agile projects

Let’s take a look at some user story examples in agile projects and how they work in real-life situations:

• For a website: “As a visitor, I want to sign up easily for the newsletter so I can receive updates and promotions.”
• For a mobile app: “If I’m using the app and forget my password, I want a simple way to reset it.”
• For an online shop: “When I’m shopping online, I want to filter items by price so I can easily find stuff that fits my budget.”

Each of these examples focuses on what the user wants and the value they get from using that specific feature. This is how teams build products that people genuinely find useful and want to keep using.

In product development, understanding users is crucial. To get this insight, a number of tools are used. Here’s how they differ and when to use them.

User needs are simple statements of what users want to do or the problems they want to solve. These goals are the basis for building and prioritizing features.

When to use: Use user needs at the very start of product development to define what the product should do.

User types are detailed descriptions of different kinds of people who might use your product. These are like characters based on research, and they include information like age, habits, wants, and challenges. 

When to use: Create user profiles early in the design process to understand your users better and make the product fit their specific needs.

User stories

User stories are step-by-step explanations of how a user type interacts with the product to reach a goal. They show how the product is used and can highlight potential problems.

When to use: Use user stories during the design phase to map out how users interact, find areas for improvement, and make the product easier to use.

User pictures

Visual narratives are visual representations of user stories, often combining images and words to clearly show the user’s experience.

When to use: Use user pictures during design reviews and presentations to make communication easier, get feedback, and improve the product based on what users see and experience.

User needs: Define what the product should do. 

User types: Represent different kinds of users and inform design choices. 

User stories: Illustrate how users interact and make the product easier to use. 

User pictures: Enhance communication and visualize the user’s experience.

We’ve lined up a few examples of what user stories might look like in real life.We’ve included both the traditional user story examples written on index cards or sticky notes, as well as digital user story examples that can easily be shared on an online platform.

Some even come in the form of downloadable templates such as Word and Excel files! Let’s dive in:

1. Product Plan user story example

This user story example Product Plan has five important sections. The first is the Title of the story. For this you might want to give the name of the feature that the story is going to be about, such as “book reviews”.

In the Priority section, you can assign a priority from low to medium or high. It’s important to assign priorities to your backlog items as some features will be in more demand, according to your requirements traceability matrix . Next to Priority is the Estimate section. Here you can state the time you think it will take the team to deliver on this feature. Here, you might assign the relevant number of scrum points.

Next in this user story example, you have the user story section itself, and finally, the acceptance criteria. The acceptance criteria is often written on the back of the index copy, but as this is a two dimensional digital copy, the acceptance criteria is clearly written just beneath as a sort of conclusion. Some may find it extra helpful to have everything included on the same page.

2. Word Doc user story example

This editable Word document is easy to use and comes with clear instructions for each clause and acceptance criteria. In our opinion, the instructions that come after each clause in the user story, along with those for the acceptance criteria are pretty straightforward to follow.

Why is it important to have these instructions in your user story template? Because if your team has gone a while without writing user stories, or you have to work on many stories, it is good to have these kinds of instructions to act as a prompt. They serve as a useful reminder of the quality of information that should go into each clause.

3. Excel user story example

What better way to group information in tables than excel? This this user story excel template is also a little different in that, in addition to the usual fields, it also gives you the opportunity to fill in other important information.

The extra fields you can find in this user story example include the user business value, risk calculation, cost of delay and weighted shortest job first . This extra information could also be useful, depending on the type of product features you are working on, or the types of clients or company that you work for.

4. Thematic user story example

This excel-based, thematic story example, you get a column for priority estimate, acceptance criteria, and also a “Release” column for a release date.

The columns in this user story example are well-ordered, with the themes laid out vertically and the column types horizontally. This would be a great template for an epic story that is composed of multiple sub-stories.

5. Epic user story example

Speaking of epic user story examples, you might want to take a look at this epic user story template . It provides a great way of grouping substories by their epic stories.

Each epic story feature is listed vertically, with the columns being for the user, the action or want and the benefit. The last column then consists of a vertical arrangement of user stories in subrows wrapped into each cell.

The way this epic user story is laid out, it manages to show a clear hierarchy between the epics and their multiple, detailed user stories. This makes it very easy to scan and to get a quick overview of all of the features that need to be applied or developed in order to satisfy the user.

6. PowerPoint user story example

This downloadable template of user story from Powerslides shows us another neat way that we can organize our user stories. These cards can be shown in a powerpoint presentation, as well as printed out and distributed.

We also like the clear division of the most important sections: the user story and the user ID, as well as a few sections that differentiates it from other examples.

In the story section we can see the user story and the acceptance criteria. However, under the user ID section is an area where you can attach a picture of your user persona, along with some checkboxes for the type of feature it focuses on and fields for priority and time estimation.

7. Index card user story example

What we like about this good old-fashioned index card user story is the simplicity and the way it brings things back to basics. Sometimes you might need to draft up a story quickly for a product feature or a quick overview of features like an epic.

This simple and traditional user story example shows us exactly how easy it can be. The great thing about index cards is that you can also write the acceptance criteria on the back and then the user story card can be passed around the team.

8. User story front-and-back example

Here we have a traditional front-and-back user story example that reflects how one might go about writing up a user story on an index card. The story shows clearly what the user wants to achieve and why they want to achieve it.

In this case they want to cancel their reservations so as not to lose all of their money should a situation arise.

On the back of the card, the acceptance criteria are all listed out. It shows all of the functions of the app that need to be taken care of in order for the user’s benefits and the benefits of the business goals to be satisfactorily met.

9. Banking app user story example

This banking app user story example is a great way of explaining a required feature and why the user needs it in a succinct way.

It gets straight to the point about who the user is and what they need to accomplish. In fact, one of the things that’s great about it is that it even hints at one of the pains the user of a banking app (in this case the credit card holder) might typically feel, such as worrying about their outstanding credit card balance, keeping a good credit score and staying out of the red.

The user in this user story example wants to pay their balance, so the first thing the design team might do is start working on a solution that gives them more or less instant access to their credit card balance. Either it should be the first thing they see when they open the app or there should be a clear option to see the balance of that card that’s just a tap away.

10. Agile user story writing template

Our next user story example from Whizible is also a template you can download to give you and your team a head start.

This template lets you write a list of multiple user stories on the same card. The horizontal columns at the top display the formulaic sentence of the typical user story, meaning the blanks just need to be filled in.

This can definitely save time when writing out multiple user stories and can help you get straight to the point. For example, at a glance we can glean from this user story example that the content manager has the following story:

“As a content manager, I want to get a weekly report of content analytics so I can monitor the effectiveness of the content writer.”

11. Amazon user story example

We picked out this Amazon user story example because it gives us an insight into the type of story expected in an agile environment in a large multinational tech company. The interesting thing is, it’s really straightforward. There’s no technical jargon and anyone from any discipline can understand it, which is what user stories are all about.

In this example, the user is registered with them and wants to buy a kindle for their friend. One of the ways the team might respond to this story, depending on who their user persona is, might be to include a gift section on the home screen. It might say something like “The perfect birthday gift”. On the other hand, they might choose to display a message that tells the user they can instantly send gifts as they browse items like the kindle.

Another action they might want to follow up on is to ensure that the customer can add new addresses or choose their current address list swiftly and easily. If you use Amazon you’ll see that this is actually the case!

12. Backlog of user stories example

In this example, we get a view of what it looks like to see the user stories listed out in a backlog in an agile product development environment.

As we can see here, the backlog items are grouped into order of priority and the tasks are represented with user stories. In each user story, we can note the different scrum points awarded to indicate how much work will be involved when it comes to each feature.

13. BBC Sport user story example

We like this simple user story example from BBC Sport . What we like about it is the fact that it’s actually conveying a lot of information in just a few words, which is exactly what a good user story is supposed to do.

In this example, the BBC were thinking of adding a share button to their sports articles, with the idea that readers can share sports related news and also get their friend’s opinions. It’s complete, conveys a lot of information and the logic is simple. It definitely justifies the need for a share button and points at someone having done quite a bit of research into their user base prior to penning this user story.

14. Easy Agile Workshop user story example

This user story example from Easy Agile is a little different. Firstly, we noticed that it’s remarkably easy on the eyes.

To begin with, each row alternates between color and white, to easily separate the concepts and facilitate scanning. The left and right sections of the card, i.e. the instructions and the sentence formula are color-coded green and blue.

Next, the instructions on the left of this user story example help serve as a useful prompt with the “Who”, “What” and “Why” categories. They help us think of the story from the business angle, such as “Who are we building it for?”, “Who is the user?” and “What is the intention?” If this example were to be duplicated, it would be incredibly useful and serve as an easy prompt to get started writing user stories.

15. Travel website user story examples

Here are some user story examples from a travel website . We’re treated to four different stories that give us a glimpse into the various features they might develop to help their user personas achieve their goals.

However, one problem that we see is that three out of the four are incorrect. Well not so much incorrect but rather, incomplete. Why? Because user stories should always state the reason for “why” they want to complete an action.

The feature should always provide some benefit to the user. This helps your team give priority to specific features that are going to provide real value and meaning to your users. And happy users means a successful product and a happy business.

The first example talks about hotel reservations. A better more complete version might state:

As a user, I want to reserve a hotel room close to the city center, so I don’t have to travel far every day.

It’s unlikely the user doesn’t have a specific location in mind for the hotel, whether they realize it or not. Adding the “why” part helps you come up with more creative solutions that might help the user, such as showing them hotels, based on their budget that are closer to the city center or to the airport. This might prevent the user having to leave the page and search the hotel addresses on Google maps and checking out distances. Otherwise, it might as well just be any other travel website that doesn’t provide a distinctly useful feature to the user.

The last user story example, however, is complete and useful to the design team; it shows exactly what the user wants – to be able to save past bookings and prevent extra data entry effort. It can also help come up with a better and more rigid acceptance criteria.

16. Agile USA user story example

Agile USA , with their sticky note user story example for an account manager, succinctly summarizes what should go into this type of deliverable.

This is a rather simple example that shows how vital information to guide the design and development team can easily be summarized on a simple sticky note. What we like about this kind of example is that it’s unintimidating and easily understandable by anyone.

It lets you follow a simple formula for writing them up, which is necessary for when it comes to creativity, especially when you’re required to crank out story after story of product features on story-writing day.

17. Introspective user story example

We decided to include this user story example by Alexander Cowan because it clearly reflects the degree of thought that goes into creating even the most basic user story.

User story writing is not just about coming up with a hypothetical situation involving a hypothetical user. Instead, the information should be based on real research and user personas. This user story example helps us draw on that information by reminding us of the basics of why we’re writing that story in the first place.

The prompts in this example are great for helping you come up with a user story that reflects the user persona that you and your team will have invested effort in creating. What we also like about this user persona example is the fact that the prompts also help lead into the acceptance criteria by asking “how will we know if it’s working?”.

18. Fitness app user story example

This fitness app user story is about helping users stay motivated by tracking their daily workouts. The user story is straightforward: “As a fitness enthusiast, I want to track my daily workouts so that I can monitor my progress and stay motivated.”

The aim here is to help fitness lovers keep an eye on their progress and stay driven. The app should let users log different kinds of workouts and give them weekly and monthly summaries. This way, users can see how they’re doing and keep their motivation high.

Additionally, it should send notifications to remind users of their workout schedules. This user story is clear, actionable, and focuses on the user’s need for tracking and motivation.

19. Coffee shop user story example

Imagine a j unior designer freelancer who seeks a cozy environment to work in while enjoying a cup of coffee. The user story describes: “As a junior designer freelancer, I want to drink some coffee in a cozy atmosphere while working so that I expect quick ordering, free space for me with the laptop, and the ability to charge the device.”

This story highlights the needs of the freelancer, emphasizing the importance of a comfortable working space with quick service, ample space for a laptop, and access to charging facilities. By focusing on these details, the coffee shop can create an inviting atmosphere that attracts freelancers and remote workers.

20. Grocery shopping user story example

This user story is centered around an individual who wants to optimize their grocery shopping experience. The user story is: “As someone who works hard, I want to do my grocery shopping without wasting time so that I can spend more time with myself.”

This story highlights the user’s need for an efficient and quick grocery shopping process, emphasizing the importance of saving time and enhancing convenience. It focuses on delivering a streamlined shopping experience that allows the user to manage their tasks effectively while enjoying more personal time.

The right medium for your user story and the right information to include in it will depend on your organization, the size and scale of your project and the complexity of the features that you’re designing.

Whatever way you choose to convey your user story, the most important thing to bear in mind is research. Once you have done adequate user research and defined your persona profiles, then you’re ready to write up your user stories.

By following the best practices stated in this post and taking inspiration from (or even downloading) the examples and templates shown, you should be well on your way to writing an excellent user story.

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45 User Story Examples To Inspire Your Agile Team

Writing user stories is a critical skill for agile teams, yet it can be challenging to master. A good user story guides your team’s work, ensuring your efforts create real customer value. But sometimes you need some user story examples to get you inspired! This article provides user story examples in different contexts, so you have a library to reference for inspiration when you write your own. 

User stories in Agile: General examples

User story examples for different domains and platforms, user story examples for websites, user story examples for login, user story examples for registration, user story examples for dashboards, user story examples for mobile apps, user story examples for online shopping, user story examples for banking systems, user stories for loan management systems, user stories for designers and developers, ux user stories examples, technical user story examples, developer story examples, backend user stories examples, jira technical story examples, technical debt user story examples, user stories with acceptance criteria examples, user stories with requirements examples.

User stories in Agile describe the value a user wants from a product without dictating how to create this value. User stories help your team understand what needs to be built, why users need it, and for whom.

Before we look at examples in more specific contexts, here are some general examples that show how user stories can capture the voice and needs of the customer in a variety of scenarios:

• As an avid reader, I want to receive personalized book recommendations based on my reading history, so that I can discover new books that align with my interests.
• As a smart home owner, I want to control all of my smart devices from a single app, so I can easily manage my home’s technology.
• As a restaurant owner, I want to update my menu items in real-time on my website, so that my customers have accurate information.

👋 For a complete overview of user stories check out Parabol’s detailed guide on how to write user stories and try out our user story quiz ! 

Each domain and platform brings unique needs and challenges for your customers. This section looks at user story examples for different contexts – from websites to banking systems.

Here are several user story examples related to common website functionalities like login, registration, and dashboard management.

• As a user, I want an option to stay logged in, so that I don’t have to enter my credentials every time.
• As a user, I want to be able to reset my password if I forget it, so that I can regain access to my account.
• As a user, I want to see an error message if I enter incorrect login details, so that I know when my login attempt has failed.
• As a user, I want to log in via my social media accounts, so that I can quickly access the platform without creating a new account.
• As a new user, I want to choose my own username and password during registration, so that I can personalize my login credentials.
• As a new user, I want to provide my basic information during registration, such as name and date of birth, so that I can personalize my profile.
• As a user, I want to customize my dashboard, so that I can choose which information is most important to me.
• As an admin, I want to see user statistics on my dashboard, so that I can monitor the platform’s usage.
• As a frequent customer, I want to see product recommendations on my dashboard, so that I can discover new products I might like.

Explore these user story examples for the specific needs and preferences of mobile app users.

• As a language learner, I want an offline mode in the language learning app, so I can continue learning without an internet connection.
• As a user of a news app, I want to be able to customize my news feed based on my interests, so that I can quickly find articles I want to read.
• As a user, I want to be able to easily sync my app data across multiple devices, so that I can access my information from anywhere.

A smooth shopping experience starts with a well-crafted user story. Here are three examples of online shoppers’ needs.

• As a customer, I want to track my order, so I can know when to expect delivery.
• As an eco-conscious shopper, I want to see environmental impact details for products, so I can make sustainable choices.
• As an online shopper, I want the ability to save products that I’m interested in for later, so I don’t have to search for them again.

To understand the needs and desires of customers using online banking platforms, let’s look at some user story examples related to banking systems.

• As a customer, I want to receive e-statements for my bank account, so I can reduce paper waste.
• As a user, I want to schedule future payments, so I can ensure my bills are paid on time.
• As a customer, I want to categorize my transactions, so I can better understand and manage my spending habits.

User stories can even address highly specialistic situations. For example, loan management is a critical aspect of banking systems. Here are examples of user stories that address such a specific context:

• As a loan officer, I want to be able to view a customer’s up-to-date credit history, so I can make informed loan decisions.
• As a borrower, I want to calculate my loan eligibility based on my income and credit score, so I know how much I can borrow.
• As a loan processor, I want to be able to track the status of a loan application, so I can manage my work effectively.

User stories can help improve communication between designers, developers, and stakeholders. This section includes examples from user experience (UX) design and software development scenarios.

Below are a few examples highlighting the crucial elements a user looks for when interacting with a product.

• As a user, I want to be able to customize the layout of my dashboard so that I can arrange the information in a way that suits me.
• As a user, I want the form validation to happen in real time so that I can correct any errors as I fill out the form.
• As a user, I want to be able to navigate the site using keyboard shortcuts so that I can perform actions more quickly.

These examples speak to developers’ and system administrators’ needs. Technical user stories are internal facing, focusing on core systems required to run or maintain a product or service.

• As a developer, I want to implement a caching mechanism so that we can reduce page load times.
• As a system administrator, I want to monitor server performance so that I can proactively address any issues.
• As a developer, I want to create an API for our service so that third-party developers can integrate with our platform.
• As a database administrator, I want to back up our data daily so that we can recover information in case of data loss.
• As a developer, I want to create a RESTful API so that our front end can communicate with our back end.
• As a developer, I want to implement an error logging system so that I can troubleshoot issues more effectively.
• As a project manager, I want to integrate Jira with our CI/CD tools so that I can track the progress of builds and deployments.
• As a tester, I want to create bug tickets in Jira directly from our testing tool so that I can streamline the bug-reporting process.
• As a product owner, I want to create custom workflows in Jira so that our process accurately reflects in the tool.
• As a developer, I want to refactor our legacy code so that it’s easier to maintain and extend.
• As a developer, I want to improve our test coverage so that we can catch and fix bugs faster.
• As a developer, I want to replace our custom-built solution with a standard library so that we can reduce complexity and improve reliability.

User stories often go hand-in-hand with acceptance criteria . Acceptance criteria explain the specific requirements a user story should meet before you can mark it as complete. Here are several examples of such pairs.

• As a library member, I want to renew books online, so I can keep them longer without visiting the library. Acceptance criteria: The system should provide the option to renew a book that is not overdue and not reserved by another member. After renewal, the due date should be extended.
• As a restaurant customer, I want to reserve a table online, so I can ensure I have a place to eat at my preferred time. Acceptance criteria: The system should show available times for reservations. After reservation, the customer should receive a confirmation.
• As a music app user, I want to create playlists, so I can organize my favorite songs. Acceptance criteria: The app should provide the option to create a new playlist and add songs to it. Users should be able to name their playlists and view them later.

While user stories and their acceptance criteria address a feature’s ‘what’ and ‘why,’ requirements delve into the ‘how.’ Requirements offer detailed instructions for implementation, often featuring technical descriptions or system interactions, which acceptance criteria usually don’t include. Here are some examples:

• As a banking customer, I want to transfer funds between my accounts, so I can manage my money effectively.

Requirements: The system should allow customers to select two accounts, enter an amount, and execute a transfer. The system should update the account balances immediately.

• As a job seeker, I want to save job listings I’m interested in, so I can apply for them later. Requirements: The job platform should allow users to save job listings to a personal list, which they can view later.
• As a driver, I want to find the fastest route to my destination, so I can save time on my journey. Requirements: The navigation system should provide the shortest time route based on current traffic conditions.

Imitation to innovation: Crafting your own user stories

The true purpose of all these examples is to inspire you on a journey from imitation to innovation in crafting your unique user stories. The nature of your product, the specifics of your user base, and the challenges and opportunities your project presents will require a tailored approach. Use these examples as a starting point into exploring uncharted user story territory.

By crafting your own user stories, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your users and their needs. You’ll find new and innovative solutions to old problems. And most importantly, you’ll build products that truly serve their intended users.

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The Complete Guide to User Stories (+Examples)

Updated: July 18, 2024

Published: September 13, 2023

How do you create a product — be it a website, a software application, or even a marketing campaign — that will win the hearts (and minds) of the people whose problems you’re trying to solve?

Enter: User stories. By looking at user story examples, you can see how they help stakeholders understand the end goals of a project, particularly the features and their importance. A user story keeps the needs of the users visible.

Before we dive into user stories, let’s talk about agile project management so you have the lay of the land.

Table of Contents

What is a user story?

How to write a user story, user story templates.

A user story is the smallest piece of your project management pie. It’s a straightforward, brief description of the feature from the perspective of the person who wants it. Therefore, the user story comes from the software user’s point of view. You can think of this piece as an actual goal you work toward with your teammates. This is something you want a user, visitor, or subscriber to be able to do with your project.

Some things to know about user stories:

• It might be helpful to think about what a user story is not . A user story is not a feature , i.e., it’s not “blue buttons that match the branding.” A user story keeps the user in mind — i.e., “create accessible navigation so that Jill can find navigate our website.”
• Your user stories are not always written with external customers in mind, either. Sometimes, they’re written for the sake of internal partners, managers, stakeholders, and key players. For example, if you’re building a
• Regardless of who the story is for, user stories always push the project forward toward solutions for those customers.

User stories are just one facet of the Agile project management framework. Whether or not you’re using Scrum or Kanban, teams working in Agile can use user stories to plan the steps necessary to make their project a success.

The biggest draw of user stories for project managers is the ease of estimating the time a team needs to create a project. Why is that important? Put on your project manager hat for a second, and imagine you’re working in a pre-funding stage startup brand.

If you don’t know how long your project is going to take, what are you going to tell a potential investor? A story helps you sketch out the time estimated to get the job done, which is compelling for potential investors.

But beyond that, the biggest reason to write user stories is to gain a level of empathy. Here’s what we mean by that.

• Empathy for the user. Writing a user story with the user in mind allows you to keep their needs top of mind. This ultimately ensures your team maintains focus on what matters most: Your customer, and therefore, business, need.
• Empathy for the team. Project managers can use these stories to put themselves in the shoes of the people they manage. With time estimations and every step of the goal visible to stakeholders, managers can rest assured the entire team is on the same page.
• Empathy for the managers. Likewise, user stories allow team members to gain greater empathy for managers. For instance, knowing that the manager worked with you to negotiate how long it will take to complete the user story could create empathy.

User stories written with empathy in mind can facilitate problem-solving, team-building, and creative thinking. You won’t wonder if you’re stepping on a team member’s or manager’s toes when everyone is working toward the same end goal.

What is an agile user story?

Agile is a software development, project management approach that puts the people first. Whether or not you are building a software application, you van use agile for your project. The key component to agile is to keep your users in perspective as you plan and spec out features. User stories are part of a successful agile approach.

If, for instance, you’re building an accountant website, you might start to spec what useful features users visiting your website would need. They might need to know how to contact the office, where to pay their invoice, or how to upload documents. ‘

Once you’ve identified the features you want to include,it’s time to outline the steps you’ll need to take to get there. With a team, you can divide and conquer the features to streamline the production process.

Are agile and scrum the same thing?

In short, no. Agile is the overall philosophy or project management style, while scrum is simply one toolset under the agile umbrella. There are multiple parts to a project even farther below the agile subheading, and it’s there where you’ll find terms like user stories, epics, and initiatives.

Speaking of epics, an epic is a big project under which all user stories that relate to that project. Think of it as a singular body of work that helps create a hierarchy in the development of a project.

When your project is a work in progress, your team has many moving parts to complete at any given time. The epic can help your team divide and conquer those segments of the project.

Some things to know about epics :

• Epics, unlike user stories, can span multiple sprints. In fact, they probably should if you care at all reducing the likelihood your team will experience burnout .
• These larger buckets are more generalized. They can be divided into sub-segments or, as we’ve noted above, user stories. Epics can be more difficult to write and summarize in ways that your team can understand and execute.
• Epics do not always contain the actual steps needed to create the final project. Epics, by and large, are like the categories of a blog, whereas user stories could be seen as the tags.

Now that you know what user stories are, let’s go over how to write one.

When writing your user stories, you can go as in-depth or be as broad as you would like. You can pause at any of these steps below and take time for research, user testing, and collaborating with stakeholders. Here are some musts when writing your user stories.

• Get to know your personas. Draw up a list, and check it twice.
• Consider actions they might take on your app, website, or project.
• Determine the need for this persona and whether or not they add business value.
• Spec out what it means for this user story to be completed and tossed into the “done” column.

The User Story Formula

A user story can be created with the formula persona + need + purpose . Here’s what a user story looks like in action:

[A Persona]

Think of the persona as the use case for the goal. They’re the main character of this story, and each persona will have a different reason for using your product. Ask yourself what this persona’s defining characteristics are.

By keeping them in mind, whether it’s Susan or Jerome, we show empathy as we drive the features and goals of the project to meet their needs.

This is not the feature, but rather the persona’s intention behind why they use the feature the way they do and for what purpose. Don’t talk about the color of the button; talk about what the button offers.

Think about what the end goal of the user is. It’s not “click the blue button.” It’s something bigger. Something that fits into their life and achieves a goal or solves a problem that they have daily.

There’s a reason that they will use your app, website, or whatever you’re building. Keep that in mind with your so that clause.

Use the INVEST Acronym

The “persona + wants to + so that” user story formula is just one such way to write a successful user story. In fact, you don’t have to use that formula for your user stories at all. There are several other methods to create successful user stories. One of them is often referred to as the ‘INVEST’ acronym.

If you’ve worked in agile development or taken any courses, you’ve probably already heard about the INVEST acronym. But in case you haven’t, here’s a refresher of what each letter stands for:

• Independent . Your team can work on user stories simultaneously yet separately enough to not impact each other’s needs or timelines.
• Negotiable . The team decides when and how to work on or implement the user story. It is not dictated by the end product.
• Valuable . A user story must offer something worthwhile to the persona and should not simply be a time filler.
• Estimable. Guessing the time to completion should be easy and quick
• Small. The team should be able to complete a user story within a sprint .
• Testable. It should be easy to understand when the user story is done through the QA process.

Defining the Completion Criteria

When you write a user story, you need to know when it’s done. That sounds easy, right? But what does “done” mean?

“Done” is up to the project manager and those planning the user stories. They can apply the criteria within the user story so that it’s visible to the team what the deciding factor should be for completing work. Think of the criteria in terms of the feature being built and the user story the roadmap you need to get there.

For instance:

• A user can add a product to a shopping cart and complete checkout.
• A user can add a review with photos of a product.
• The product listing pages show an image carousel with a lightbox feature.

Looking for a user story template to help streamline your user story creation process? We got you covered.

Smartsheet: User Story Templates

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User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum with Examples and Template

In this guide, I’ll explain User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum, and how to write them. I’ll also provide examples and downloadable templates for you to use.

User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum are two related but distinct components used in agile development to capture requirements and ensure a shared understanding of desired functionality. Here’s an explanation of the difference between the two:

What is a User Story?

A user story is a brief, simple, and user-centric description of a specific functionality or feature from the perspective of a user or stakeholder. It follows a specific format, typically as follows:

“As a [role], I want [goal] so that [benefit].”

User stories are written in a non-technical language to promote communication and collaboration between the development team and stakeholders. User stories capture the “what” and “why” of a requirement, highlighting the intended user or stakeholder, their goal or need, and the expected benefit or value.

What are Acceptance Criteria?

Acceptance criteria are specific, detailed, and testable conditions or requirements that must be met for a user story to be considered successfully implemented and accepted by the product owner or stakeholders.

Acceptance criteria elaborate on the user story by defining the specific functionalities, behaviors, or qualities that should be present in the delivered solution. They serve as measurable indicators of completion and guide the development team in building the right solution.

Acceptance criteria typically outline the boundaries, constraints, or specific expectations for the user story. They help the development team and stakeholders align their understanding of what is expected and provide clear guidelines for testing and validation. Acceptance criteria are written using precise language and can take the form of statements, lists, rules, examples, or scenarios.

User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum

Related tutorial: User Stories, Examples, and Free Template

User Story Examples

User Story 1: As a digital marketer, I want to track campaign performance in real time so that I can make data-driven decisions and optimize strategies for better results.

User Story 2: As a marketing manager, I want to create targeted audience segments based on demographics and interests so that I can deliver personalized messages and improve campaign engagement.

User Story 3: As a content creator, I want to schedule social media posts in advance so that I can maintain a consistent presence and effectively engage with my audience across different platforms.

User Story 4: As a campaign analyst, I want to generate detailed reports on key performance metrics such as click-through rates and conversion rates so that I can assess the effectiveness of marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement.

User Story 5: As a product owner, I want to integrate marketing automation tools with customer relationship management (CRM) software so that I can streamline lead nurturing and optimize the customer journey.

User Story 6: As a digital marketer, I want to conduct A/B testing on landing pages and email campaigns so that I can identify the most effective variations and enhance conversion rates.

User Story 7: As a campaign manager, I want to implement retargeting campaigns to reach users who have previously shown interest in our products or services so that I can increase brand awareness and drive conversions.

User Story 8: As a marketing team member, I want to collaborate and share assets seamlessly through a centralized content management system so that we can improve workflow efficiency and maintain brand consistency.

User Story 9: As a digital marketer, I want to implement SEO strategies and optimize website content so that I can improve organic search rankings and attract more targeted traffic.

User Story 10: As a marketing coordinator, I want to create and manage effective email marketing campaigns, including personalized drip campaigns, to nurture leads and drive conversions throughout the customer lifecycle.

Acceptance Criteria Examples

Acceptance criteria for User Story 1: 1. The campaign tracking system provides real-time data on key performance indicators such as impressions, clicks, and conversions. 2. The campaign performance dashboard displays metrics segmented by various channels and campaigns. 3. The system allows for setting up custom alerts or notifications based on specific performance thresholds. 4. The data visualization capabilities of the tracking system enable easy identification of trends and patterns. 5. The system supports integration with other marketing tools or platforms for comprehensive data analysis.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 2: 1. The audience segmentation feature allows filtering contacts based on demographic attributes like age, location, and gender. 2. The system provides options to create dynamic audience segments based on user behavior and interests. 3. The targeted messaging functionality allows the personalization of content based on audience segment attributes. 4. The system offers to report on audience segment performance and engagement metrics. 5. The audience segmentation process is intuitive and user-friendly, requiring minimal technical expertise.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 3: 1. The scheduling feature enables the selection of specific dates and times for publishing social media posts. 2. The system supports scheduling posts across multiple social media platforms simultaneously. 3. The scheduled posts are automatically published at the designated times without any manual intervention. 4. The system provides a clear overview of the scheduled posts and their corresponding platforms. 5. The scheduling functionality allows for editing or rescheduling posts as needed.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 4: 1. The reporting system generates comprehensive reports with key performance metrics such as click-through rates and conversion rates. 2. The reports provide detailed insights into the performance of different marketing campaigns or initiatives. 3. The system allows for customizing report parameters and selecting specific time ranges for analysis. 4. The reports offer visual representations, such as graphs or charts, for easy data interpretation. 5. The reporting functionality supports exporting reports in various formats for sharing or further analysis.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 5: 1. The marketing automation tools integrate seamlessly with the chosen CRM software. 2. The integration enables automatic synchronization of lead data between the marketing automation and CRM systems. 3. The system allows for setting up personalized email workflows triggered by specific customer actions or attributes. 4. The integration facilitates tracking and reporting on the effectiveness of lead nurturing efforts. 5. The marketing automation tools provide analytics and insights on customer interactions within the CRM system.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 6: 1. The A/B testing functionality allows the creation of different variations of landing pages and email campaigns. 2. The system evenly distributes traffic or recipients among the variations for accurate comparison. 3. The A/B testing process automatically determines the winning variation based on predefined success metrics. 4. The system provides statistical significance analysis to ensure reliable results. 5. The A/B testing results are easily accessible and provide insights into the performance of each variation.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 7: 1. The retargeting campaign setup allows defining specific criteria for targeting users who have shown previous interest. 2. The system tracks and logs user interactions to accurately identify retargeting candidates. 3. The retargeting ads are displayed to the targeted users across relevant channels or platforms. 4. The system provides reporting on the effectiveness of the retargeting campaigns, including impressions and conversions. 5. The retargeting campaign settings are customizable and allow for optimization based on performance metrics.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 8: 1. The content management system provides a centralized repository for storing and organizing marketing assets. 2. The system supports seamless collaboration among team members, allowing simultaneous editing and version control. 3. The content management system offers search and filtering capabilities for easy asset discovery. 4. The system ensures consistent branding by enforcing access restrictions and maintaining approved templates. 5. The system integrates with other marketing tools or platforms for efficient asset sharing and distribution.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 9: 1. The SEO strategies involve optimizing website content based on relevant keywords and search intent. 2. The system provides recommendations or suggestions for improving on-page SEO elements, such as meta tags and headers. 3. The optimized website content yields higher organic search rankings for targeted keywords. 4. The system offers analytics and reporting on organic search traffic and keyword performance. 5. The SEO optimization process follows industry best practices and guidelines for sustainable results.

Acceptance criteria for User Story 10: 1. The email marketing campaign creation process allows for personalized content and dynamic variables. 2. The system provides a user-friendly email builder with drag-and-drop functionality and customizable templates. 3. Email campaigns can be automated with triggers based on specific customer actions or time-based sequences. 4. The system tracks email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates for effective campaign measurement. 5. The email marketing functionality integrates with CRM or lead management systems for streamlined lead nurturing and tracking.

NOTE: There is flexibility in the number of criteria per user story; it doesn’t have to be limited to exactly five. The number of acceptance criteria can vary, depending on the complexity and specificity of each user story.

Below, you’ll discover an Online Generator for User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum. It’s a fillable form that you can use for practice.

User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum Generator

Please add a brief description of the type of user, the tasks they need to perform, and the goals they want to achieve. Keep it concise and specific.

Example: As a website visitor, I want to be able to create an account so that I can access exclusive features and personalize my experience.

Acceptance Criteria

Please provide the given context, the action that triggers the criteria, and the expected observable outcomes. Be specific and clear.

Example: Given that I am on the login page, when I enter valid credentials and click the "Login" button, then I should be redirected to the dashboard page and see my personalized content.

Your User Story:

Homework assignment (user stories and acceptance criteria in scrum).

Epic Story:

Title: Upgrade User Authentication System

Description: As part of our ongoing effort to enhance security and user experience, we need to upgrade the user authentication system for our mobile banking app. The current system relies solely on username and password authentication, which has proven to be vulnerable to various security threats. The goal of this upgrade is to implement a multi-factor authentication system that provides users with added security while ensuring a seamless login experience.

Homework Task:

Your task is to split the epic story “Upgrade User Authentication System” into four user stories and determine acceptance criteria for each of the user stories. Use the provided template to structure your user stories and acceptance criteria.

User Story Template:

User Story 1: Description: Acceptance Criteria: 1. 2. 3.

User Story 2: Description: Acceptance Criteria: 1. 2. 3.

User Story 3: Description: Acceptance Criteria: 1. 2. 3.

User Story 4: Description: Acceptance Criteria: 1. 2. 3.

Submission:

Please submit your homework to our FB group . You can either type your user stories and acceptance criteria directly into the template or provide them in a separate document.

Make sure to include your name and the date on your submission.

Note: Feel free to refer to the Scrum guide and any other resources we’ve discussed in class to guide your splitting of the epic and creation of acceptance criteria. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out for assistance.

In summary, a user story provides a high-level description of the desired functionality or feature from the user’s perspective, while acceptance criteria provide specific and testable conditions that must be met for the user story to be considered complete.

User stories capture the “what” and “why,” while acceptance criteria focus on the “how” and provide a detailed specification for the development team to ensure the successful implementation of the user story.

You might also want to check:

• Writing User Requirements in Scrum
• Mastering User Requirements in Scrum
• User Story and Acceptance Criteria: Examples, and DIY Implementation

Discover the art of writing user requirements (User Stories and Acceptance Criteria in Scrum) and enhance your Agile and Scrum skills.

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After spending over 20 years in IT, with a decade dedicated to Agile and Scrum methodologies, Dejan Majkic emerges as a trailblazer in product development. He has aided thousands of students worldwide, leveraging his expertise to assist them in entering the tech industry, obtaining certifications, excelling in interviews, and securing well-paid positions. CLICK HERE TO UNLEASH YOUR FULL SCRUM POTENTIAL

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Refine user stories and acceptance criteria with agile.

Aug 20, 2020 • 9 Minute Read

Introduction

User stories are a core component of the Agile framework, shifting the focus from software requirements to a user-centric description of desired capabilities. User stories are intentionally short and simple, focused on one particular feature written from the perspective of the user of a system rather than the system's developers.

They're different from traditional software system requirements in that they bring end users to the center of the conversation, adopting a more informal language to provide context for the developers of the system. A user story thus constitutes an end goal, a desired functionality from the perspective of the user, not necessarily articulated in technical terms and agnostic to the engineering efforts that it entails.

As a product owner or team lead, it is your (and your team's) job to refine user stories such that they constitute small, "atomic" units of work in an Agile framework such as scrum or kanban. For example, in scrum, user stories are added to sprints to be "burned down" over the duration of the sprint, in which case it is important that the user story is small enough to fit into a sprint. It is also important to establish a clear set of acceptance criteria , which often involves discussions with the end users. In this guide, you will learn how to refine user stories and acceptance criteria with the Agile framework.

User Stories Guidelines

A well formulated user story is:

• Simple and precise (can be programmed, tested, and integrated within a single sprint)
• Useful (it should provide value to the final product)
• Focused on a specific user goal

User stories are often expressed as persona + need + purpose . It is then typically written in a simple sentence that follows the structure:

"As a [persona], I [want to ...], so that [...]"

"As a user, I want to be able to securely log in to the system so that my information can only be accessed by me."

Refining User Stories

The first step in refining a user story is to think about the amount of work involved in implementing the functionality. This will often depend on other downstream features that may or may not be already implemented. For instance, in the example given above, if the system already had in place most of the user sign-up capabilities (registering with username and password, changing password, remembering password, etc.), then this user story could be small enough in scope as it would involve adding perhaps the user session handling in the backend and a login button to the frontend. However, let's assume that we're starting from scratch. In this case, we will turn this user story into an epic.

This epic will then include the following smaller user stories:

• As a new user, I want to register by creating a username and password so that the system can remember me and my data.
• As a registered user, I want to log in with my username and password so that the system can authenticate me and I can trust it.
• As a registered user, I want to be able to occasionally change my password so that I can keep it secure.
• As a registered user, I want to be able to request a new password so that I don't permanently lose access to my data if I forget it.

These smaller user stories are now more precise and refined in their scope and are more likely to fit each within a single sprint.

Acceptance Criteria

The acceptance criteria determine the specific conditions that the software product must satisfy to be accepted by and meet the expectations of the user. It also forms the basis for the acceptance testing stage.

During the refinement process, as larger user stories become epics and are broken down into smaller scoped user stories, it becomes easier to reason about the acceptance criteria and come up with a shortlist for each user story (less than five criteria listed, ideally one to three criteria as a good rule of thumb). If the list of acceptance criteria for any user story is too big, it may be an indication that the user story is too large in scope and should probably be split further.

Some guiding principles for defining acceptance criteria are:

• Each acceptance criterion should be independently testable
• Each acceptance criterion test should have a clear pass/fail result
• Acceptance criteria should be focused on the end result (functionality), not the mechanism through which it is achieved
• When relevant, "hidden" non-functional criteria should be included

An acceptance criterion is often expressed as a sentence following the structure:

"Given [precondition], when I [do some action] then I expect [result]”.

In the example above, the acceptance criteria for the first two stories could be:

Adding Non-functional Requirements

As mentioned earlier, a good practice in defining acceptance criteria is to also include non-functional requirements, i.e., requirements related to the system's qualities and attributes that are not necessarily directly related to the functionality, but are crucial in meeting the user's expectations in regards to the system's behavior.

For example, building on the list of acceptance criteria for the user story:

"As a registered user, I want to log in with my username and password so that the system can authenticate me and I can trust it."

We can add as a criterion:

"Given that I am a registered user and logged out, if I go to the login page and enter my username and password and click on Log in, then my user login session is loaded in less than eight seconds."

This criterion captures two underlying qualities of the system's design, namely:

• High-availability (the request cannot timeout due to there not being available resources), and
• Scalability (the request cannot take too long because the servers can't handle the load).

A non-functional requirement could also be captured into a new user story added to the same parent epic, especially when it involves a new functionality entailing implementation work by the developers. An example, related to the security of user's accounts, would be:

"As a registered user, I want to be notified if there have been three unsuccessful login attempts against my username so that I can take action to secure my account."

Although not specifically stated by any user, such "non-functional" capabilities are simply expected as common sense, or sometimes they may be included by the product owner as something seen as design or security best practice.

Other "Grooming" Tasks

Finally, it is worth noting that refining user stories is not only about sizing and splitting larger stories into smaller ones, but can also involve the following tasks:

• Removing user stories that are no longer deemed relevant
• Reviewing and re-assessing the priority of stories
• Assigning estimates to stories which have not yet been assigned one
• Correcting estimates based on new information
• Adding, editing, or removing acceptance criteria based on new discussions

An Agile backlog is meant to be a living body of information. Therefore, it is not necessary that all user stories be broken down into smaller and refined stories with corresponding estimates and acceptance criteria right from the onset of the project. It is important, however, that at any moment in time there are enough refined stories in the backlog ready to be added to the next sprint or backlog iteration.

An Agile project is no different than a traditional software development project in that it is also subject to "scope creep" in the form of user stories not really adding any substantial value to the product, but that sounded like great ideas when they were created. Therefore, having an ongoing effort aimed at managing the backlog and refining user stories in light of either internal discussions or discussions with end users is fundamental to avoid budget overruns or an unsuccessful product that does not meet expectations.

What are user stories?

A user story is a short, informal description of how a potential user might interact with a feature and is usually told from the user's perspective.

An agile user story is usually written in non-technical language and describes the value the feature or product in question adds to the end user. User stories are critical in agile software development to encourage discussions and to keep feature development focused on the customer.

• Templates & Examples
• How to write

Good user stories don't just help with customer satisfaction, they also help improve employee-customer relationships.

Agile development culture advocates giving importance to individuals over processes and tools, and user stories lend a human aspect to the feature backlog . A user story isn't just about what you're building—it should also help you understand why you're building it. This understanding will also improve The process of how you build the same feature.

A typical user story might look like this: "As a <user role>, I want to <feature> so that I can <receive benefit>." "I'm Brad, a user of the online flight booking portal, and I want to know if my ticket is booked so I don't have to try booking again."

Knowing that you're helping a human solve a tangible problem with the feature you're building is more motivating than just developing a list of features your manager assigned to you. Good user stories don't just help with customer satisfaction—they also help improve employee-customer relationships.

Why write user stories?

User stories help you find clarity. For example, if your task is to create a "Login page," you might simply visualize a screen where the user enters their username and password to access the platform or service. However, when you imagine a human in front of the login page, you might realize you'll need an error message if the credentials are wrong and a password recovery mechanism in case they forget their password. User stories help you define how your user will perceive and engage with each feature.

User stories help you define how your user will perceive and engage with each feature.

Components of an agile user story

A user story usually has three components:

The title should be concise and explicit. Something like "Add signup form on the homepage" is a good example while "Make agreed upon changes" is not.

Description:

The description is the heart of the user story, and is often written using a template. For example, "As a customer of an online cab booking service, I want an online payment to be an option so I don't have to carry cash with me all the time."

Acceptance Criteria:

This is used to define when a user story can be deemed complete. Writing good acceptance criteria is an effective way of exploring all the details of a user story and defining its scope.

As a university student

I want to know my fee for the semester

so that I can pay the amount.

Acceptance Criteria for this story may be:

1. The fee is displayed.

2. The fee is calculated.

3. The fee for the upcoming semester is displayed.

4. The fee is not displayed for an invalid student ID.

Acceptance criteria are defined before development begins. A good practice is to write them in clear, simple language, which can be translated into manual or automated test cases.

User stories in Agile Software Development

A user story is the smallest chunk of a product feature that you can explain independently. It shouldn't contain technical details, should be captured in a sentence or two, and should prompt a discussion during which the details are nailed down.

User stories should be written in plain English without technical jargon so non-technical members of the team to contribute to the discussion. Developers work with many technologies and often use acronyms and jargon that might not be understood, even within the same team. With user stories, anyone can contribute by simply putting themselves in the shoes of a potential user.

The Product owner who has a clear vision for the product along with a sound understanding of its user base—should write the first set of user stories. As the team starts brainstorming, all stakeholders can contribute user stories, including the development team.

With user stories, anyone can contribute by simply putting themselves in the shoes of a potential user.

User story templates and formulas

There are helpful templates which can be used for writing user stories. Some examples of these templates are:

Independent

The goal a user story aims to achieve should be independent of other product goals.

The details of a user story should be up for negotiation. For example, the first iteration of a login page can go live with just an error message. A password recovery mechanism can be added later. 

A good user story should add value to the end user.

It should be possible to estimate the efforts required to complete a user story.

The goal defined should be small enough to fit within one sprint.

Any feature or enhancement that is the result of a user story should be testable - you should be able to write acceptance criteria before it's implemented.

Role-feature-benefit

This is the most popular template used. It looks like this: As a <user role>, I want to <feature> so that I can <receive benefit>. Some teams go a step further and use an actual name to make their user feel more human.

The 3 C’s of a user story

The 3 Cs formula captures the components of a user story.

Typically a sticky note with a rough one- or two-line description of the user story

Conversation:

A largely verbal conversation about the user story and how it can be explored. This could include anyone remotely involved with the feature

Confirmation:

A tangible output which confirms the conversation's objectives have been achieved.

Given-When-Then

Given (some context or description of the situation) When (some event(s) occur ) Then (some observable reactions should occur)

It's not unusual for teams to fall into the rote application of these templates. A template or formula can be a useful reminder to keep the conversation focused on the user. Remember, normal phrasing can be just as effective in communicating the essence of a user story—the discussion around the user story contributes more to its implementation than the initial two lines written on the card.

How to write effective user stories?

Writing agile user stories may appear easy enough, but writing effective ones can prove to be challenging. Incorrect user stories lead to wrong interpretations and implementations, which can cause frustration within a team. Here are some tips for writing user stories:

You can't write user stories from a requirement document.

Epics are higher-level user stories, whose work spans across multiple sprints. You can use Epics to group similar user stories working toward a common goal.

Think ahead. While acceptance criteria can be good enough for short term success in the software life cycle, product decisions should be driven by user feedback. Learn how your targeted users perceive and interact with the feature to understand how to improve it.

Understand your user personas. A user persona is the profile of your target user, created to help empathize with and understand the people you're developing the product for. It could be as specific as "Girls between the ages of 13 to 20" (for a teen magazine) or as general as "Men" (for a razor). If you don't know your users, you can't solve their problems.

The level of detail needed for a user story changes over time. You can more easily understand the user story for the next iteration of a feature than the one planned for the upcoming release. The context and the lessons learned from one iteration of a user story will influence the next one.

User stories are not tasks. A user story might require 10 tasks to complete, and they have different purposes. Tasks are concerned with implementation while user stories provide definition.

User stories can help you empathize with a user and fully understand the problem you're trying to solve. When used effectively, a user story is a small tool which yields enormous impact on shaping your end product. When something is well planned from the beginning, it's already halfway done. Similarly, if you get your user stories right, you can rest assured knowing you would spot the red flags on your product road map early on.

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