Improving Agility in User Stories
To tackle complex situations, split research tasks into separate stories with their respective goals. If a story is too complex, it should be broken down into several accounts that address individual aspects. Technical components must be listed, quality attributes defined, options listed at various quality levels, unsatisfactory options removed, slices selected, and workflow steps kept at a high level with no more than ten steps. Divide activities into high-level steps that are not technology-specific to help generate excellent ideas. Exceptional user stories should trigger behavior changes.
It is imperative to focus on improving information retrieval and speed. Instead of making commitments, provide users with options. Story maps outline significant user activities like booking a venue, purchasing a book, or attending a concert. Yet, activities like submitting ratings or social media posting are too small and do not need maps.
Activity metrics need to be improved for measuring progress and managing all the information can be overwhelming for product managers. When market opportunities change, focus on significant work and avoid delaying it with unnecessary features. To prevent the story card hell problem, maintain many levels of abstraction in the backlog.
