Who writes user stories in SAFe ?

Who writes user stories in SAFe ?

Learning Mudra, Category - SAFe Agilist

User stories are the compact classification of a nominal piece of desired functionality. The user stories are written in the user’s language. Agile Teams create short, vertical pieces of functional requirements that are designed to be accomplished in a single Iteration. User stories are the primary artifact that is used to define the system behavior in Agile. The stories are usually told from the user’s standpoint and written in their language, they are compact and simple descriptions of functionality. All user stories are targeted to enable the implementation of a compact, vertical slice of system behavior that supports incremental development.

Stories convey just about enough information for both business and technical professionals to grasp the meaning. Details are reserved until the story is ready for implementation. Stories get increasingly explicit as acceptance criteria and acceptance tests are applied, assisting in the maintenance of system quality. User stories give functionality to the end user directly. They describe all of the labor that goes into creating the solution's intended behavior. However, the detailed implementation work is stated in stories that comprise the Team Backlog. The majority of stories derive from enabler business and Program Backlog features, but others emerge from the team's local environment.

Each story is a short, self-contained behavior that can be executed in stages that adds value to the user or the Solution. It is a vertical slice of functionality that ensures each iteration adds fresh value. Stories are short and must be finished in a single iteration. While anyone can write stories it is the job of the Product Owner (PO) to approve them into the team backlog and accept them into the system baseline. Stickies do not scale well across the Enterprise, therefore stories frequently migrate into Agile Lifecycle Management (ALM) technology.

Product Owner

The Product Owner (PO) is a part of the Agile Team who is in charge of establishing Stories and managing the Team Backlog to streamline program execution whilst preserving the conceptual and technical integrity of the Feature or components for the team. The Product Owner plays an important role in optimizing the team's value and ensuring that Stories match the user’s needs and adhere to the Definition of Done (DoD). For most organizations transitioning to Agile, this is a new and crucial role that often translates into full-time employment, with one Product Owner supporting each Agile team.

The Product Owner is the Agile team member who works as the customer's representative, working with Product Management and other stakeholders, along with other Product Owners, to identify and manage stories in the Team Backlog. The Product Owner collaborates with the team to reach an agreement on recognized story completion. This includes ensuring that the story fits acceptance requirements, has the necessary, persistent acceptance tests, and otherwise adheres to its Definition of Done (DoD). In doing so, the Product Owner also ensures a degree of quality, with a primary focus on fitness for use.

User Stories

The primary means of conveying required functionality is through user stories. They largely take the place of traditional requirements specifications. However, in some circumstances, they are used to describe and define system behavior, which is then documented in specifications that support suppliers, traceability, compliance, or other requirements. User is value and customer-centric since they focus on the user stories as the subject of interest rather than the system. The ‘user-voice form’ is the recommended form of expression to support this. Using the ‘user voice’ format regularly tends to strengthen the team's domain competency; they grow to better understand their user’s real business needs. The teams are guided by this format to understand who is using the system, what they are doing with it, and why they are doing it. While user story voice is the most common, not every system communicates with an end user. The user is sometimes referred to as a device or a system.

Enabler Stories

Teams also create the new architecture and infrastructure required to put new user stories into action. In this situation, the story may not have any direct impact on any end user. Enabler stories are used by teams to support exploration, architecture, or infrastructure. Enabler stories can indeed be written in technical language instead of user-centric language. Enabler stories are shown in the same way as user stories are, generally by displaying the information gained, artifacts created, or the user interface, stub, or mock-up.

Writing Good Stories

Good stories necessitate a variety of viewpoints. To reduce rework and boost throughput, the entire team of Product Owners, developers, and testers creates a shared understanding of what to construct in agile. Teams work together to design extensive acceptance tests that characterize each story utilizing Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). Collaborative story writing guarantees that all viewpoints are addressed and so everyone accepts the story’s behavior, which is reflected in the story’s description, acceptance criteria, and acceptance tests. The acceptance tests are written utilizing the system’s domain language as well as the Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). To ensure Built-In Quality, Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) tests are then automated and performed regularly. Because Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) tests are produced in response to system requirements (stories) they can be utilized as the definitive declaration for the system’s behavior, supplanting document-based specifications.

Conclusion

Stories are concise explanations of a specific piece of desired functionality written in the user's language. Agile Teams build short, vertical slices of system functionality are intended to be completed in a single Iteration. While stories can be created by anyone, the Product Owner is in charge of approving them for the team backlog and accepting them into the system baseline. The Product Owner assesses and reprioritizes Iteration Planning as part of the backlog preparation, which includes coordination of dependencies with other Product Owners. The majority of backlog items are developed into user stories for implementation. This could occur before the iteration, during the iteration planning, or the iteration. While any team member can write stories and acceptance criteria, the Product Owner ensures that the process runs well.