We’re officially in the thick of the holiday season.

While things change from year to year and the people we spend each particular holiday with fluctuate depending on who’s in town, one thing stays pretty constant regardless – sharing stories.

From watching beloved holiday movie classics (We’ve already streamed Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, and Elf at our house) to the memories we share around the table as we piece together the past, stories bind us.

This has made me think about the stories we write inside our businesses and how we feel about our customers.

In the agile framework, a user story represents the smallest unit of work, defining an end goal from the user’s perspective rather than detailing features. It is an informal, customer-oriented explanation of a software feature, emphasizing its value.

User stories also serve as foundational elements for larger agile structures, such as epics and initiatives, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and fostering agility in development teams.

Creating user stories helps your team stop making features you think a user wants and instead walk through a clear goal for a client to enhance their experiences and deploy effective workflows.

What are user stories?

User stories are informal, natural language descriptions of software features, requests, and faults from the end-user perspective. End-users don’t write them, but they are often sourced from their feedback. This perspective highlights overlooked or initially unthought-of aspects by your internal team.

Why use user stories?

User-Centric Focus: User stories capture requirements from a client’s perspective, promoting a deep understanding of their needs and enabling prioritization based on their value.

Communication and Collaboration: User stories foster collaboration across diverse team roles, ensuring a shared understanding of project goals and facilitating effective communication.

Flexibility and Adaptability: User stories support incremental development, allowing for the delivery of a minimum viable product and easy adaptation to changing requirements through manageable adjustments.

Here’s a start on how you write user stories:

1. Define “Done”: Clearly articulate what constitutes a “done” or “complete” user story, emphasizing error-free task completion from start to finish.

2. Outline Subtasks: Identify and prioritize subtasks or steps needed for resolution, assigning responsibility for each.

3. User Personas: Conduct thorough research to define user personas, recognizing the importance of understanding the diverse variables influencing user experiences.

4. Ordered Steps: Structure user stories as the minor units of tasks or processes, ensuring each story represents a singular step toward completion.

5. Listen to Feedback: Acknowledge the value of user feedback as a crucial information source, leveraging user insights to enhance and refine user stories.

6. Time Considerations: It’s important to balance efficient story gathering and meaningful conversations. Clarification through conversation is essential to the success of the user story development process.

If you’re interested in learning more, this guide provides a great detailed overview:

As we wrap up 2023 and head into 2024, let’s prioritize really understanding where our clients are in their story.