Writing technical user stories

[Gmail Moe]

What do you think about having technical user stories in the product backlog, such as data migration? Any suggestion?

Sent from my iPhone

[mheusser]

My suggestion is to find a way to make them valuable for the business.

For example, one team I work with really struggles to test project x.
It's old and was developed with old-school techniques, so testing it
takes a long time.

This week we wrote a family of stories. eventually, we'll run the
project side-by-side in two different databases and diff the output.
The first story, the one that could be done next iteration, is 'just'
to build the tool to allow a tester to setup and run project X in one
step. Investigation after that will be manual.

It takes about one day to setup and run project X right now. With
this tool, it will be a few clicks.

This will both increase the speed of our testing AND our confidence
that we got it right.

This has DIRECT value to the business.

We'll give the stories to the Product Owner; I expect they will fund
it and prioritize it highly.

Does that answer your question? My preference is to find the business
value, have the tech people write it, and have the customer fund it.
Some teams have a few points per iteration (or one iteration in every
six) set aside for technical debt repayment. I've been ... less
success with that approach.


regards,

--heusser

[Dan Rawsthorne]

Well, since the Backlog is about managing and prioritizing the Team's work, and this work will be done by the team, it has to be in there somehow. There are a number of strategies: have a 'business value' Story adopt it, rewrite it so that it has 'business value', or put it in just as it is, with 'technical value'.  Personally, I prefer the last one, as it's more honest, but it's up to your team how it gets done. Dan  ;-)

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Gmail Moe <moe...@gmail.com> wrote:

What do you think about having technical user stories in the product backlog, such as data migration? Any suggestion?


Sent from my iPhone

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[Azza]

I have adopted a halfway house between not wordsmithing technical
stories to make them seem like more traditional business user stories
(which sometimes frustrates develops who have written them and have
them abstracted) and having stories that are technically meaningful to
the team.

I basically use the 'so that' to always provide the benefit part that
the story provides and this allows technical stories to sit in the
backlog while still allowing the PO to understand the priority and why
the technical work is important.

On Aug 6, 7:16 pm, Dan Rawsthorne <dan.rawstho...@drdansplace.com>
wrote:

[P_SJC]

We are upgrading an application and I have been assigned the task to write user story for data migration. Have any example you can share?

The only user stories I have dealt with so far describe features user can access. I see data migration from old to new application version as a pure technical task so I am failing to envision how to translate them into user story. Any thought?

[John Miller]

Hi,

Are User Stories the best format for your Backlog Items for your data migration project?

Thanks,

John Miller

http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/

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[Ron Jeffries]

P_SJC,

On Aug 27, 2013, at 7:56 PM, P_SJC <pandy...@gmail.com> wrote:

We are upgrading an application and I have been assigned the task to write user story for data migration. Have any example you can share?

The only user stories I have dealt with so far describe features user can access. I see data migration from old to new application version as a pure technical task so I am failing to envision how to translate them into user story. Any thought?

Suppose you said one of these worked, and it did not. Would the user notice anything wrong?

Ron Jeffries

www.XProgramming.com

It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

-- Ronald Reagan

[Justin Urbanski]

What has worked for me in the past is listing the constraints rather than writing a pure user story. 

Justin

[Steve Berczuk]

On Aug 27, 2013, at 8:02 PM, Ron Jeffries <ronje...@acm.org> wrote:

On Aug 27, 2013, at 7:56 PM, P_SJC <pandy...@gmail.com> wrote:

We are upgrading an application and I have been assigned the task to write user story for data migration. Have any example you can share?

The only user stories I have dealt with so far describe features user can access. I see data migration from old to new application version as a pure technical task so I am failing to envision how to translate them into user story. Any thought?

Suppose you said one of these worked, and it did not. Would the user notice anything wrong?

And also, who is the user?

[Mark Levison]

User Stories are not the be all and end all. I might use them to force me to think things through. Some approaches:

"As an admin in the billing department I want all our existing invoices moved over to the new system so that I can easily chase deadbeat clients"

Use your imagination from there.

Cheers

Mark

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Cheers
Mark Levison
Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Writing
Proud Sponsor of Agile Tour Gatineau Ottawa Nov 28, Toronto 26 and Montreal 24

[Tobias Mayer]

I don't think it matters whether we call something a technical story, or a user story. What matters is we understand the value of what we are doing—the Why. If developers want to do some deep technical work and cannot explain the value of that work in a way the PO understands, they probably need to rethink it. Chances are they do not know the value themselves.

Only by understanding the value of the work to be undertaken can a PO effectively prioritize. Expressed value gives us transparency. A vague "it's kind of important..." keeps everyone in the dark.

Tobias

On Friday, August 5, 2011 7:59:43 PM UTC-7, moe wrote:

[Dan Rawsthorne]

Couldn't agree more. That's why there are all just Stories to me...

Dan Rawsthorne, PhD, PMP, CST
3Back.com
1-855-32-3BACK x323
Author of Exploring Scrum: the Fundamentals

On 9/12/2013 12:41 PM, Tobias Mayer wrote:

I don't think it matters whether we call something a technical story, or a user story. What matters is we understand the value of what we are doing�the Why. If developers want to do some deep technical work and cannot explain the value of that work in a way the PO understands, they probably need to rethink it. Chances are they do not know the value themselves.

Only by understanding the value of the work to be undertaken can a PO effectively prioritize. Expressed value gives us transparency. A vague "it's kind of important..." keeps everyone in the dark.

Tobias

On Friday, August 5, 2011 7:59:43 PM UTC-7, moe wrote:

What do you think about having technical user stories in the product backlog, such as data migration? Any suggestion?

Sent from my iPhone

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[Mark Levison]

Tobias - agreed. What I like about Stories is that they force me to think about value delivered to a real person.

Cheers

Mark

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