Catalog
method#Product#Delivery#Governance#Software Engineering

User Story

A short, user-focused description of a requirement used to communicate and plan value within agile teams.

A user story is a short, user-focused description of a requirement that captures functional behaviour in plain language.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Medium
  • Business
  • Design
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Issue tracker (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps)Test automation toolchainContinuous Integration / Continuous Delivery pipelines

Principles & goals

User focus: Describe behaviour from the user's perspective.Invest in clear acceptance criteria.Iterative & small: Prefer small, testable stories.
Build
Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Lack of definition leads to incorrect implementations.
  • Stakeholder expectation mismatch with unclear stories.
  • Technical debt from neglected non-functional requirements.
  • Write stories small enough for a single sprint.
  • Use clear, verifiable acceptance criteria.
  • Discuss stories with the team instead of writing them alone.

I/O & resources

  • Stakeholder requirements or user feedback
  • Product vision or epic descriptions
  • Existing technical constraints
  • Small, prioritized and testable user stories
  • Acceptance criteria and assumptions
  • Clarifications and defined follow-up tasks

Description

A user story is a short, user-focused description of a requirement that captures functional behaviour in plain language. It helps teams prioritize, plan, and communicate value increments. User stories enable incremental delivery, drive conversations, and support early validation of assumptions in agile product development.

✔

  • Improves communication between business and development.
  • Enables prioritized, incremental delivery of value.
  • Encourages early validation of assumptions.

✖

  • Can be imprecise without clear acceptance criteria.
  • Not a full specification replacement for complex integrations.
  • Excessive fragmentation can cause loss of context.

  • Lead time per story

    Time from creation to completion of a user story.

  • Number of completed stories per sprint

    Measure of delivery volume per iteration.

  • Post-release defect rate

    Number of defects discovered after implementation.

Email login (example)

A story describes login from a user perspective including acceptance criteria.

Onboarding flow (example)

Incremental stories that ensure first-time user success.

Unlock premium feature (example)

Story with acceptance criteria for permissions and billing integration.

1

Introduce a consistent story structure (persona, goal, benefit).

2

Train the team on INVEST principles and acceptance criteria.

3

Establish regular refinement sessions.

4

Define metrics and monitor them continuously.

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Recurring technical debt from neglected architecture.
  • Short-term workarounds that must be addressed later.
  • Incomplete acceptance criteria leading to rework.
Unclear acceptance criteriaMissing product contextDependencies between stories
  • Using stories as detailed technical specifications.
  • Creating many small stories without overarching context.
  • Ignoring non-functional requirements.
  • Too coarse formulations lead to interpretation gaps.
  • Overemphasis on estimation instead of value.
  • Story splitting without regard to user flow.
Ability to articulate user needsFacilitation and prioritization skillsBasic knowledge of tests and acceptance criteria
Value orientation and user needsModularity and incrementalityTestability via clear acceptance criteria
  • • Time-limited refinement capacity
  • • Dependency on stakeholder availability
  • • Consider non-functional requirements separately