Do your developers and business people communicate effectively, understand each other perfectly, and nearly complete each other’s sentences? Or do they speak different languages and suffer the recurring cost of translating between business, product, and technical views? Are planning, tracking, and reporting smooth and simple, or filled with friction and dependent on diverse systems?

Well-executed User Stories and User Story Maps reduce confusion, elicit effective feedback faster, and align the team’s efforts to produce valuable results sooner. This effectiveness, however, does not emerge from the tool or format used, but from understanding the techniques and developing the skills essential to composing user stories well. In this workshop, you’ll learn the art of writing User Stories and User Story Mapping.
This workshop is suited to people and teams interested in improving product planning and execution.
User Stories Workshop

Workshop Editions

We deliver this workshop as a series of 4, 2-hour, live interactive online sessions. Sessions are usually held weekly, including materials, integrated learning exercises and assignments to help participants apply the material to their own work between sessions. Participants have access to an Industrial Logic forum where coaches assist participants as they apply the material.
  • Context, Perspective, and Key Events
  • Stakeholders, Placeholders, and Collaboration
  • The Role of Stories in the Art from Concept to Cash
  • User Stories Formats
  • Diagnosing and Improving User Stories in Your Environment
  • Splitting and Simplifying Stories
  • Story Mapping— a Visual Roadmap to Deliver Value Sooner
  • Summary of Criteria for Effective Stories
  • Recognizing and Rapidly Repairing Problems
  • Common Pain Points and Misunderstandings
  • User Stories as Diagnostics— Identifying Root Cause Issues
Here is a typical 3-day agenda. We can customize this agenda to best meet your needs.
  • User Stories in a Nutshell
  • Context, Perspective, and Key Events
  • Placeholders and Collaboration
  • The Role of Stories in the Art from Concept to Cash
  • Diagnosing and Improving User Stories in Your Environment
  • Story Mapping— a Visual Roadmap to Deliver Value Sooner
  • Splitting and Simplifying Stories
  • Introduction to Collaborative Specification
  • Summary of Criteria for Effective Stories
  • Recognizing and Rapidly Repairing Problems
  • Common Pain Points and Misunderstandings
  • User Stories as Diagnostics— Identifying Root Cause Issues

What Will You Learn?

outcome

Understand the intent and use of user stories

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Use thin-slicing to accelerate feedback, and deliver value continuously

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Rapidly recognize deficient user stories and improve them

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Avoid common traps with user stories

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Recognize system context and understand why the story is not the format

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Optimize the lifecycle of your user stories, including scenarios and evolutionary design