Creating User Stories for Developers – Part 2

Who is Responsible?

In short, the entire Scrum team is responsible for creating user stories. However, there is more nuance to this process. For many teams, it is best to allow one specific person to take charge in writing user stories. This responsibility often falls to the product owner, since he or she takes a more administrative role on an Agile team, and more directly works with stakeholders. Even if the product owner is the role who actually writes the user stories, they require the expertise and feedback of other roles on the team.

The product owner usually does not understand all pieces of software development. Roles like developers and analysts must share their knowledge to create the best user stories. Developers, in particular, understand what goes on behind the user interface. They know what features take more effort to create, and which require less. What sounds quick and easy to other roles may be a red flag to developers and could be more difficult and complex. By getting opinions from all roles on the team, the person in charge of writing user stories can give accurate story points to user stories and break up larger stories as necessary.

Who is Responsible?

For many teams, the best way to come up with user stories is to host a meeting to share information. Agile already promotes face to face communication, and a meeting with all members of a Scrum team allows everyone to voice their perspective. Instead of trailing out emails and memos over days and weeks, this allows the team to create user stories in a few hours or less. Even if a face to face meeting is impossible, there are other ways to get feedback from developers and other roles.

Before a Scrum team begins working on a feature, they must write the user stories for a feature. No one role on the team knows all of the details to write an informed user story. Even if one person leads the process, everyone on the team is valuable to the process, developers especially. By writing user stories that contain all of the necessary parts, and describe unique behaviors, the Scrum team can work against user stories that give value to the development process.

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