In an agile project management cycle, it is very important to add value to the customer’s or end user’s experience. If you refer to multiple scrum guides, you’ll come across a crucial thing, i.e., a user story! A user story is a key component in the sprint that must be defined in a very clean and clear manner in order for it to be understood by every stakeholder so that it can add value to the business. In this article, we’ll learn more about writing a well-defined user story in JIRA.

Jira Definition of A User Story

“A user story is an informal, general explanation of a software feature written from the perspective of the end user. Its purpose is to articulate how a software feature will provide value to the customer.”

As the above definition suggests, a user story is simply a natural language text that tells everyone about the feature.

Need of A User Story

• To understand the end goal of the sprint — user stories help everyone know the end goal of a sprint that a scrum team should look for.

• To collaborate effectively — If the user story is neatly defined, the collaboration between stakeholders becomes easier.

• To motivate the scrum team — A user story consists of small deliverables that add value to the business. With each passing user story, team members enjoy small challenges and small wins to keep themselves encouraged.

• To focus on the user requirement — User stories always keep everyone in the scrum team focused on the user’s requirements. This helps in bridging the gap between expected and actual output, thus minimizing the product variance.

The Skeleton of A User Story

A user story must follow a user-centric format i.e. persona + need + purpose*.* This comes down to breaking the user story into the following format:

As a [role] user….*,
*I want to [need/requirement]….,
so that [purpose]….

followed by the description (which consists of all the use cases and test cases).

Let’s see an example below for a simple Forgot Password feature of an HR tech platform.

As a recruiter user, I want to be able to reset my login password so that I can access all the authorized features on the platform.

• As a registered user, I must be able to click on the Forgot Password? link on the login page, which will ask me to enter the registered email for which I want to reset my password.

• The email must be a valid email ID in a regular email format (username@mailserver.domain).

• Once I submit a valid email, I should be shown a system prompt that ‘You’ll soon receive a six-digit OTP on your email to verify your email if it exists in our records. Please enter the OTP to proceed to set a new password.’

• If the email I entered does not exist in the system, I should be prompted with an error message that ‘We did not find the entered email in our records. Please sign up here to access the platform.’ The sign-up link should take me to the registration page on the platform.

• On the other hand, if I enter a valid email, I should receive an OTP on my registered email, and I should be redirected to the Verify Email page.
  If an OTP is wrongly entered by me, I should be prompted with the error message ‘Please enter a valid OTP’.
  If an OTP is not received on an email, there should be a link to ‘Resend OTP’ which shall be enabled after 30 seconds of the previous attempt to send another or the same OTP by the system again.
  On entering a valid OTP, I should be redirected to the set new password page where I should be asked to enter the password twice in two different text fields.

• The password must meet the complexity requirements below:
  - The password must be an alphanumeric text
  - The password must be a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 14 characters long
  - The password must contain at least one special character from “@, #, $, *”
  - The password must not contain a part of the username
  In case the entered password does not meet the requirements, I should be prompted with a help text that will guide me to set a new password to meet the system requirements.

• On entering a new valid and the same password in two different fields, the password must be reset, and I should be asked to log in with the newly set password. I should be able to access the platform with the new password immediately.
  If I enter different passwords in two different text fields, I should be prompted with an error message that ‘Passwords did not match’.

As you can see, this user story is pretty clear and explains the user flow and requirements in a natural language that can be understood by every stakeholder. This is just the conversion of a feature requirement into simple text.

The INVEST Concept

Every user story must be based on the INVEST concept explained below:

Independent: A user story should be independent or have the least dependency on anyone else’s work.

Negotiable: A user story should be framed in such a way that it can be negotiated with the Product Owner in case of any technical challenges or a limited timebox.

Valuable: The user story must add value to the customer/end-user experience.

Estimable: The user story must be crisp and crystal clear so that developers can estimate it well and there will be a minimum variance in given estimates.

Small: A user story should be small, or there should be multiple small user stories if the feature is complex.

Testable: A user story must cover the acceptance criteria that define all the test cases. Testers should be able to write all the test cases by just looking at the acceptance criteria written in the user story.

Conclusion

A well-defined user story helps expedite the development work by writing down crisp and clear requirements in simple language to keep every stakeholder on the same page and following the agile methodology in the right way.

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