5. Ron Jeffries & Chet Hendricks:
“Agile is simple, but it’s not easy”
6. Simple but not Easy
• Use self organizing teams … but people have
competing interests
• Deliver greatest value … but each person
defines value differently
• Break stories down to workable sizes … but
sometimes you lose the plot!
18. How to do it?
1. Divide into groups of 3-5 people
2. Start by gathering “things people do” – the user tasks. Write
them down individually and then read them aloud to your group
– Likely they start with a verb.
– These are high level user stories called “User Tasks” (walking
skeleton)
– This forms your story map skeleton
3. Group them silently (simply because it is faster)
4. Name the groups and lay them out in order of time (left to
right)
– These are called “User Activities” (backbone)
5. Add more detailed user stories below the main tasks
6. Prioritize top to bottom
7. Break into releases
19. How to do it?
smithcdau (@smithcdau)
11-08-11 2:12 PM
RT @shanehastie: @jeffpatton if you're arguing
about sequence it probably means it doesn't
matter. #Agile2011 #yam
25. Wrap-Up
• Make better decisions
• Increase your ability to deliver (interests &
value)
• Allay fears of agile sceptics
26. Links
• Two articles from Jeff:
– http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/the_ne
w_backlog.html
– http://www.agileproductdesign.com/writing/how
_you_slice_it.pdf
• Online User Story Mapping:
– http://www.cardmapping.com
Notes de l'éditeur
Breakfast (Steve)Step 1: Generate tasksSplit up into groups of 3 to 5As individuals, think about your morning routine – the things you do.Write down each thing you do on one post-it note. Have everyone in your group use the same colour post-it for this exercise.Step 2: Read them outHave each person read their post-its out loud to the group and then place them in the middle of the table so that you can see all the post-its at once.Comments: Notice the similarities between your post-its and other peoples. Notice also that if you missed a few things, somebody else came up with the missing tasks. You probably all have things like “Brush Teeth”, “Get Dressed”, “Eat breakfast”. All starting with verbs.Step 3: GroupNow as a group, and without talking, move the post-its that are similar to each other closer to each other, and those that are not similar, move them farther apart. Those that are exact duplicates you can eliminate or put on top of each other.Step 4: Name the groupsYou should now have some distinct groups. As a group again, start labeling these groups with a different colour post-it. Just put the group name on top of the grouping.Step 5: Now re-arrange your groups in order of time from left to right. Put the group post-it at the top and the tasks below the group, but still in order left to right.(At this point, show a simple example)Overall comments:Your first user story map!The groups are called “User Activities” – this is the backbone of your applicationThe items below are called “User Tasks” – this is the walking skeleton of your application
Breakfast (Steve)
User Activities are things that users do towards achieving a particular goal.
User Tasks are specific steps within an activity. Tasks by themselves do not move towards a goal, but are required components of an activity.
User Stories are small end-to-end vertical slices of functionality that implement User Tasks.
Not H/M/L, but top to bottom
Goal: Release a minimum of one story in each column after the first two iterations.Why: Validate / Test (as per Jon above)
For PM:For Developer:For QA:For Customer:For Architect:For Analyst (middle-up)For Quiet contributor:Deck of cards, pick 5 cards and make the best poker handBreakfast – power outage and you only have 15 minutes – what do you cut?
We’re going to create a second map with some more detail and more relevance to software. You can move your old map out of the way.Practice – build your own MS Outlook competitor.Step 1: Generate tasksSplit up into groups of 3 to 5As individuals, think about your usage of your favourite e-mail toolWrite down each thing you do on one post-it note. Have everyone in your group use the same colour post-it for this exercise.Step 2: Read them outHave each person read their post-its out loud to the group and then place them in the middle of the table so that you can see all the post-its at once.Comments: Notice the similarities between your post-its and other peoples. Notice also that if you missed a few things, somebody else came up with the missing tasks. You probably all have things like “Send Email”, “Read Email”, “View Calendar”, “Create Contact”, etc.Again, all starting with verbs.Step 3: GroupNow as a group, and without talking, move the post-its that are similar to each other closer to each other, and those that are not similar, move them farther apart. Those that are exact duplicates you can eliminate or put on top of each other.Step 4: Name the groupsYou should now have some distinct groups. As a group again, start labeling these groups with a different colour post-it. Just put the group name on top of the grouping.Step 5: Now re-arrange your groups in order of time from left to right. Put the group post-it at the top and the tasks below the group, but still in order left to right.Overall comments:Your second user story map!Reminder:The groups are called “User Activities” – this is the backbone of your applicationThe items below are called “User Tasks” – this is the walking skeleton of your applicationNotice how fast you were able to create a reasonable outline for your whole application?Keep this map as we will be adding to it shortly. At this point we have no user stories.
Goal: Release a minimum of one story in each column after the first two iterations.Why: Validate / Test (as per Jon above)
Tell Wizard of Oz / Sneakernet storiesBest place to go out for beers near the convention centre (doesn’t scale, but…)Spreadsheets to input dataSecurity later (install only on secure machines for first release)
In your user story map you should probably have a “Compose Email” or “Create Email” user task under the “Email Management” user activity or something similar. (if not, then what kind of e-mail have you been using?)We’re going to create the stories that go under that User Activity.Step 1: Generate tasksSplit up into groups of 3 to 5As individuals, think about creating an e-mail and write one user story (just the title, don’t worry about the rest) on each post-it. Slice each story thinly.Again, have everyone in your group use the same colour post-it for this exercise but use a different colour than the ones you have used so far.Step 2: Read them outHave each person read their post-its out loud to the group and then place them in the middle of the table so that you can see all the post-its at once.Again:Notice the similarities between your post-its and other peoples. Notice also that if you missed a few things, somebody else came up with the missing tasks. Step 3: GroupNow as a group, and without talking, move the post-its that are similar to each other closer to each other, and those that are not similar, move them farther apart. Those that are exact duplicates you can eliminate or put on top of each other.Step 4: PrioritizeInstead of naming our groups, this time we are just going to prioritize them top to bottom. The ones at the top will be created first and the others second.Think about the order that each piece would have to be built (again, reminder of the I in INVEST)If you are disagreeing about any story, feel free to split it again if you can.You can do this out loud.Overall comments:Again, notice how fast you were able to create a reasonable outline for your whole application? Has requirements gathering ever been this fast for you?You would repeat this for each activity and there are other requirements facilitation techniques to use like personas, scenarios, UX Design Studio, etc. These models are all inclusive models. They involve everyone and take advantage of all ideas without resorting to the trouble that is brainstorming or even writing down the correct interview questions in order to generate your high level scope and requirements.Do this with your customer!!!