How to write a good user story?

Required tools

• Azure DevOps — The user story is documented in the Title, State, Description, and Acceptance Criteria fields.
• User story template — The template with a fixed format for the story and acceptance criteria.

Write the story in a fixed format

1. 1.Identify who, what, and why

   Establish who has the need, what the need is, and why the need exists.

2. 2.Put the sentence together

   Write the story as “As a … I want … so that …”, for example, “As a user, I want to submit my application digitally so that it can be processed quickly.”

3. 3.Let the product owner own the story

   It is normally the product owner's role to write the user story. If the product owner does not have sufficient insight to do so herself, she is nevertheless responsible for ensuring that someone else completes it.

Write acceptance criteria

1. 4.Use the format “Given that …, then …”

   Break the user story down into acceptance criteria that describe what is required for the story to be accepted as delivered.

2. 5.Write the criteria so there is no room for interpretation

   Write each criterion so that it can be clearly determined whether it has been met. Feel free to combine functional and quality requirements where relevant.

3. 6.Use the criteria as a basis for testing

   Use the acceptance criteria as the basis for test tasks and test criteria, so that the developer and tester know exactly what needs to be created and tested.

Fill in the fields in DevOps

1. 7.Set title and status

   Use an abbreviated version of the user story as the title, and set the status to whatever the team has agreed should apply when the story is considered “ready”.

2. 8.Fill in Description and Acceptance Criteria

   Paste the user story into the Description field and the acceptance criteria into the Acceptance Criteria field.

3. 9.Use the discussion section actively

   Document the collaboration in the discussion section: ask questions and capture comments as the story develops.