Developing Epics for Developers – Part 2

Developers in Collecting Epics

User stories and epics can come from a variety of sources. The collection method depends on what works best for both the Scrum team and the stakeholders. Some of the more common tactics include interviews, user group meetings, questionnaires, observations, and user story workshops. For developers, the best methods are ones that can be qualified and digitized. Documentation that the developers can read back over is convenient. The feedback that can be put on a scale or divided into categories can be analyzed on a meta level.

Methods like observations and user group meetings are more convenient for stakeholders. They simply do what they normally do, and the Scrum team pulls data from the results. The problem for developers is that the data is less quantifiable. Without concrete information, developers are less able to plan for epics. With enough research, observation and group meetings can work, but they are less developer friendly.

User story workshops and interviews are a middle ground for both parties. Stakeholders must relay what their normal workflow looks like to the Scrum team. This means the information won’t be quite as genuine as an observation. However, it does give more concrete information for developers. Especially with text-based interviews or vocal interviews that are transcribed, developers receive written information from the stakeholders. This gives them something to fall back to, and know exactly what stakeholders asked for.

The most convenient way of collecting user stories for developers is the questionnaire. With defined questions, and a mix of multiple choice, scale, and open text types, developers get concrete and organized data. Instead of taking bits and pieces from interviews or observation, everything is already sorted. Each stakeholder’s response can be compared against all other responses to the same question. This gives developers a quick and easy way to see how all of the stakeholders tend to feel about proposed issues.

While developers have very little input in the process of developing epics, they do benefit from it. The way that epics are collected can make developers’ jobs easier or harder. The amount of information they receive is inversely proportional to risk and the amount of research they must do. With good collecting tactics, and well-defined personas and epics, developers can do their jobs well and reduce the number of problems that come up later in development.

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