Duration: 2 Days

Description

Creating user stories as a means of tracking project requirements is far different than creating large documents to capture all requirements up front. This change may seem overwhelming and intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. This course provides in-depth training for creating user stories, decomposing user stories, grooming the product backlog and estimating using relative sizing. In accordance with nTier’s hands-on teaching philosophy, this workshop is 50 percent lecture and 50 percent exercises with interactive discussion.

Audience

This course is ideal for Product Owners, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, Agile Team Members, and anyone responsible for writing, refining, or managing user stories in an Agile environment. It is also valuable for project managers, product managers, and stakeholders involved in defining and prioritizing product requirements. Both new and experienced practitioners seeking to improve their backlog grooming, story writing, and estimation skills will benefit from this workshop.

Objectives

  • Understand what the inputs are for user stories
  • Learn how to properly document user stories
  • Grasp how to decompose and aggregate stories as needed
  • Learn about grooming the product backlog
  • Understand relative sizing as a method for estimating

Prerequisites

No prerequisites are required for this course.

Course Outline

Module 1: User Stories

  • Requirements and the Product Backlog
  • Epics, Features, and Release Planning
  • Building a Solid Product Backlog from Release Planning Stories
  • Creating a User Story Template
  • I.N.V.E.S.T. in Good User Stories
  • Handling Non-Functional Requirements
  • Just Enough Elaboration
  • Conducting a Story-Writing Workshop
  • Roles and Personas
  • Creating Acceptance Criteria and Defining “Done”
  • Story Aggregation and Decomposition
  • Spikes and Special Stories

Module 2: Grooming the Backlog

  • Prioritization
  • Looking Ahead
  • Groom Continually
  • Value Assessment
  • Risk-Based Prioritization

Module 3: Estimation Basics

  • Estimates versus Commitment
  • Relative Sizing
  • Planning Poker
  • Sizing the Product Backlog