Beyond User Stories: Identifying Missing Links in Your Product Backlog
Sat, 2009-01-31 19:32 — Ellen Gottesdiener
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Level: Introductory
How do agile teams account for backlog items that do not fit the user story paradigm? Aside from user stories, what are ways you can represent product needs? Teams struggle with incorporating quality attributes (sometimes called “quality of service” requirements), external interfaces, design and implementation constraints, and team or technical “stories” into their backlogs. Without these items, you will not build the right product, or build it right. This tutorial will introduce you to ways that agile teams represent these nonfunctional requirements and other items in the backlog.
Process/Mechanics
- Lecture: three categories of nonfunctional requirements and three types of “other” stories (5)
- Lecture: five techniques for identifying quality attributes in your backlog (10)
- Exercise: build quality attributes for the backlog (15)
- Lecture: external interfaces (10)
- Exercise: build backlog items for external interfaces (15)
- Lecture: other story types (5)
- Exercise: build backlog items for other stories (10)
- Lecture: defining the business value of other stories (5)
- Exercise: identify business value (10)
- Tutorial retrospective (5)
Learning outcomes
- Understand what nonfunctional requirements are
- Learn five techniques for representing quality attributes
- Discover two ways to identify external interfaces
- Explore how to define the business value of nonfunctional requirements
- Identify the “other” types of stories that should be in your backlog
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