Comments on: They’re not User Stories

By: From Journeyman to Client | upstream agile - software

From Journeyman to Client | upstream agile - software — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:25:28 +0000

[...] ideas to the test. Remember that the only valid business value here is to make money. And that the only role that is important here is you as the stakeholder of the [...]

By: J. B. Rainsberger

J. B. Rainsberger — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:48:58 +0000

This reminds me one of the chapters in The Power of Full Engagement: “What’s the Good /Business/ Reason To Do This?” I ask that question in most storywriting sessions at least once.

By: Interesting posts 2010-02-06 « The Art of Software Development

Interesting posts 2010-02-06 « The Art of Software Development — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:46:39 +0000

[...] They’re not User Stories, they’re Stakeholder Stories [...]

By: Matt Green

Matt Green — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:48:42 +0000

Since reading your earlier posts on Feature Injection I’ve turned all our stories “upside down” – the result – during the earlier stages of projects, we can talk a language that stakeholders understand and they evaluate the usefulness of a story much sooner – plus they reduce the tendency to subconsciously design the system themselves that often happens when one starts with “I want to…” because they (stakeholder) are least best placed to decide the HOW but the WHY – that’s where they excel.

In a current project the ‘man with the money’ at our customer’s company took one look at the “In order to” clauses and instantly knew they were the start of his cost-benefit case. These things really smooth the project along.

By: @NeilRobbins

@NeilRobbins — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:52:12 +0000

I love the way that you are flipping the thinking on these things. Saw you speak with Dan North at Skilsmatter a few months ago & one of the biggest & best things I took away was this small & massive change in writing stories. By changing the name to Stakeholder stories you’ve done it again. I think it’s great the way that by paying attention to the language we deploy and changing it in small ways you are challenging (and chaning) the way we think and perceive in such big ways. Thanks.

By: Eric Järdemar

Eric Järdemar — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:40:35 +0000

Totally agree too! By introducing the user story with the business value makes it understandable for any one in the organisation and like you mentioned gives the right focus!

By: Dan Bergh Johnsson

Dan Bergh Johnsson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:23:00 +0000

Yes Liz!

Totally agree! Thinking in “stakeholders” also opens up the door to write stories that cover “technical debt”, or the need for smoothing up release processes, or learning (”As head of development, I want all programmers to know how to roll back a failed commit, so we can get rid of all these stops”).

Mused on this at [http://dearjunior.blogspot.com/2009/04/as-as-stakeholder-not-actor.html]

By: Niclas Nilsson

Niclas Nilsson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:16:35 +0000

Brilliantly put Liz! This is so common and I’ve struggled with this many times myself. The real stakeholders quite often never touch the system.

Kind regards
Niclas Nilsson, factor10