How to Create Great User Stories For Your Mobile App

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How to Create Great User Stories For Your
Mobile App
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SAMARITAN INFOTECH
One of the most challenging parts of making an
app is creating a final product that truly
represents the initial vision. This is especially
true for complex project requirements, where you
need to translate ideas into tangible
functionality. User stories simplify this
process. Whether youre a developer,
entrepreneur, business owner, or app development
agency, understanding the power of user stories
will ultimately help you deliver better
software. This in-depth guide will explain
everything you need to know about user stories,
including how they work, why theyre important,
user story examples, and how to write user
stories for mobile apps. What is a User
Story? A user story describes what an app user
wants to do within a software system to achieve
something valuable. User stories are short,
plain language descriptions of a goal from the
end-user perspective. User stories do not
describe a specific software feature or business
objective.
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A good user story is short, and clearly
articulates who the user is, what they want to
do, and why they want to accomplish
something. User stories dont need to be very
descriptive. You can write a user story using
informal language in a single sentence. Just
include the following pattern Role As a
user persona Feature I want to complete an
action Benefit So that I can get some
value When you put this user story template
together, you might get something like this As
a project manager, I want to stay organized, so I
can keep my entire team on track. This could
easily be an example of a user story for project
management software. There are lots of different
ways to showcase user storiesand they dont
have to be packaged as some type of formal final
project. You can even write user stories on
post-it notes, index cards, or share them
digitally with your project team.
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Why Are User Stories So Important For a Software
Development Team? User stories have become
crucial for agile software development. Before
agile user stories were implemented, teams would
spend weeks writing highly detailed requirements
and specifications for a given software project.
But theres a disconnect here in the language
used by programmers and developers compared to
the language used by the general public. So
there would often be confusion among
stakeholders involved with the project. Without
an agile user story, the specifications would
look something like this The app should do
this The app will do that The feature will
complete something else But this type of
direction is not helpful. You end up with long
paragraphs of style details that many people
working on the project wont read or understand.
Even the developers would skip over these, as
they would instead look to start writing code as
soon as possible. User stories changed
everything.
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Some of the top benefits of user stories
include Focusing on the user Using a
checklist or to-do list will keep a project team
task-oriented. But by following user stories, it
keeps everyone concentrated on solving problems
for the app users. Promoting collaboration
User stories help define your end goals. This
makes it much easier for teams to collaboratively
decide the best route to take, ensuring that the
end users needs will be best served. Driving
creativity Instead of using uninspiring tasks
or objectives to define the project, user
stories encourage everyone to let their creative
juices flow. This inspires critical thinking and
problem solving based on user needs. Building
momentum Each time a new user story gets
achieved, the team feels a sense of
accomplishment. These small wins help build
momentum throughout the entire project, so the
final product doesnt feel like an
insurmountable mountain to climb. While user
stories can be used for any type of product or
project management initiative, they work great
for application development.
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Key Elements of a Great User Story The key
components of a great user story can best be
described by the acronym INVEST. This acronym
was first coined by Bill Wake, an expert in the
field of extreme programming and agile project
development. INVEST has become the gold standard
for defining success with user stories ever
since. Lets take a closer look at each part
below Independent Every user story must be
treated as a single component within the whole
project. This means that teams should be able to
work on each story in any order, without any
type of co-dependency from one user story to
another. There should not be any overlap between
stories, as this adds redundancy and
confusion. If any user stories are dependent on
each other, it usually means that one can be
omittedwhichever is less valuable.
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Negotiable Creating a user story relies on
collaboration between clients, designers,
programmers, and stakeholders. It starts with a
conversation. In a perfect world, everyone will
be on the same page with the story although
thats rarely the case. Stories should be written
in a way so that the priority, project
requirements, and scope can easily be changed.
This aligns with other principles of agile
project management. Valuable Value is arguably
the most important element of a user story. If
the story isnt adding value to the end-user,
eliminate it. Mobile apps must be designed to
add value, and every story must be written
keeping this concept top of mind. Estimable Prio
rity is another important aspect of user stories.
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Each story should be sized appropriately in a way
that defines its priority level. High-value
features with a long development process might
not always get the highest level of priority in
the development timeline. In some cases, its
better to knock out quick wins and complete
other stories first. Small The exact size of
the task or story depends on the project
management method youre using. Sometimes a story
can be completed in a single sprint. Other times
they could take longer. For agile methodologies,
stories shouldnt take more than three or four
days of work. Testable When a story is
complete, it should be tested for the product.
This ensures that every user story fulfills its
acceptance criteria, which varies by the project.
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How to Write User Stories For Your Mobile
App Now that you understand whats required of a
good user story, its time to start creating
user stories for your app. Follow the simple
steps below to get started. Identify Different
User Personas The first step of writing user
stories is defining the types of users who will
use your mobile application. This is different
from identifying the target audience. A user
persona describes what the person does when
theyre connected to the app. Its even possible
that a single user could have multiple
associations when using the product. For
example, lets look at an app that everyone is
familiar with YouTube. Someone might use
YouTube for educational purposes and learning
new skills. But that same exact person could also
use the app for entertainment. The user story
for each of these scenarios would have different
personas.
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Establish Goals For Different User Types Now you
should have a list of different user personas.
For each persona, you need to define the goals
for the end-user in your user stories. Think
about why theyre using the mobile
application. What goal will they gain by
interacting with the app? Lets stick with the
YouTube user story example. The educational
users goal might be finding the most informative
video on a particular subject. Where an
entertainment users goal might be discovering a
closely related video recommendation upon
completion of another. This will lay the
groundwork for your software features. Define
the What and Why Youve already answered the
who of your user stories. Now its time to
answer the what and why with user story
mapping.
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Define the Acceptance Criteria We briefly talked
about the acceptance criteria earlier in the
testable part of the INVEST acronym for user
story key elements. What exactly is the
acceptance criteria? Think of your user stories
like any other storyit must be logical to make
sense. Look back at the what and why, and answer
it with how. The acceptance criteria explains
exactly how youre going to deliver value to the
other. Youll answer this without getting into
the intricacies of application development (this
comes later in the process). But youre going to
use your imagination to play out how the story
unfolds. For example, you might say that a user
could press a button to automatically share a
location with their friends. Or maybe they need
to perform a specific gesture to confirm their
order before finalizing the checkout process.
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User Story Examples Lets take a closer look at
some examples of user stories that you can use
as a template or inspiration As a mobile
commerce customer, I want a shopping cart button,
so I can easily store items that Im interested
in purchasing. As a dry cleaning customer, I want
to receive a push notification when my order is
done, so I can pick it up right away. As a
student, I want to invite my classmates to
download the app, so we can work together on a
project. As a manager, I want an option for
anonymous feedback, so my employees feel
comfortable sharing information with me. As an HR
rep, I want to generate a report on employee
feedback, so I can understand which departments
need better training materials. As a basketball
player, I want a court reservation feature, so I
can book a private time to practice at the
gym. By using a natural language description,
like the examples above, a user story helps
everyone understand the goal of a particular
initiative within the app.
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Pro Tips and Best Practices for Writing User
Stories Before we finish up, I want to leave you
with some proven tips for success when youre
writing user stories. Keep these in mind as
youre going through the steps described earlier
in this guide Always write the user story from
the users perspective. Keep the description
simple. You can always add smaller user stories
later for context. Stay organized with a user
story map so you can see the big picture of your
backlog. Create user stories before you start
worrying about product features. Use the
stories as inspiration for your mobile app
features. Encourage creativity and collaborative
brainstorming from your development
teams. Confirm the need for a feature before
development begins. Use the user stories to
estimate tasks to ensure your development team
members can handle the workload.
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If youre stuck, you can start with epics.
These are larger user stories that can
eventually be broken down into smaller stories.
Keep everything simple, concise, and in terms
that everyone can understand. Continue to refine
the stories until theyre ready. Keep your
stories in a place where theyre easily
accessible and visible to every team
member. Dont rely on user stories alone to
create an app.
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