Does the SCRUM user story template exist?

Searching for user story history

When starting in the "world" of agile, most of us begin to know some critical buzzwords as SCRUM, Agile, Framework, daily and many other words speaking about some specific key points to be used in the daily work. Still, most of us never stop to ask why things are like they are and only keep doing the same job all day. Recently, I had one discussion about User Story. As Business Analyst and Product Owner it is expected to me to write a user story in a suitable format or template, but does this format exist?

I like to say:

In the past, I was young and ignorant, after a long time studying, I'm only ignorant.

Well, if there is a good template of user stories, I will find it on the SCRUM Guides. If you are new to "SCRUM World," there is more than one Scrum Certificate (School), and maybe they have different guides. After some work, I had the following vision:

After understanding the SCRUM situation on the market and getting the guides, it's time to search for the correct SCRUM USER STORY TEMPLATE, and let me share what I got:

• SCRUM GUIDE : They don't have the word "user story"; in fact, they use the word "user" only one time for another purpose.
• SCRUM Body Of Knowledge from Scrum Study : They don't only have a definition of the user story but also have a format of a user story, like below:

Now I have an official format of a user story, although with another question on my mind, why doesn't SCRUM Guide even speak about user story and the book of knowledge fully explain it? Why is there a massive gap between the sources?

Time to check another source of knowledge. Let's review what the BABOK says about it:

BABOK's user story definition: "User stories capture the needs of a specific stakeholder and enable teams to define features of value to a stakeholder using short, simple documentation."

They show a structure of user story, but not necessarily a format, like below:

• Title (Optional)
• Statement of Value (Using Who, What, Why)
• Conversation
• Acceptance Criteria?

Also, they have three limitations to be considered using user stories, and I loved that one:

Requires context and visibility; the team can lose sight of the big picture if stories are not traced back through validation or supplemented with higher-level analysis and visual artifacts.

Three different books, two different formats, and why doesn't the SCRUM Guide define a user story? This question blew my mind—Let's search who created this thing.

SURPRISES

My first surprise is about the creation, SCRUM didn't create user stories, but on XP (Extreme Programming ), another agile framework, user stories have been used on XP for the first time in the '90s. That point is essential to understand why Scrum Guide doesn't have the use nor define the user story.

In 2001 Ron Jeffries released an article about the three critical points of a user story; the paper is centred on Card, Conversation and Confirmation, maybe the first version of what we are using today. However, who created this template?

My second surprise, the template was born inside a company in the late 1990s and not inside of a guide, on a company called Connextra. Rachel Davies was working in this company where, as one of the first companies started using XP in the '90s, she invented the template of "As a user, I want…, so that…".

Thank you very much, Rachel Davies.

Now I understand the basics around the user story history of who created the template. However, I still have one last doubt, after years writing stories, I and many others used the INVEST mnemonic to describe the characteristic of good stories:

• Independent: the stories can be delivered in any order.
• Negotiable: the details of what's in the story are co-created by the programmers and customers during development.
• Valuable: the functionality is seen as valuable by the customers or users of the software.
• Estimable: the programmers can come up with a reasonable estimate for building the story
• Small: stories should be built in a small amount of time, usually a matter of person-days. Certainly, you should be able to build several stories within one iteration.
• Testable: you should be able to write tests to verify that the software for this story works correctly.

But, who created that?

Bill Wake created the INVEST and SMART mnemonic. You can read one of the articles from Bill speaking about both on the link .

To understand

We are using the user story idea from one framework, the amazing formated created inside the company and a concept of a "good story" from another person. If that is not a good description of TIA "Transparency, inspection, adaptation," I don't know what is.

But on the other hand, this changed the context of the "user story template" for me because we are using a combination of features developed for years by different persons inside different companies. There is not a cake recipe called "SCRUM USER STORY TEMPLATE- USE IT," and it's a creation of a community that was made to be used by a community.

In my humble opinion

The most important lesson here is to understand that as agile, this user story is not created to be a template made in stone, immutable. Moreover, it is designed to be used, adapted, and modified to best fit your reality, daily work, and company souls.

If you keep speaking about templates endlessly, you do not understand what agile is about, and you don't understand the value of using the SCRUM framework, you are trying to create a box of rules to control things born to be uncontrolled.

Start it and improve it.

SCRUM doesn't have a user story default template most of the time, but you can learn with people who have been doing it for years and years, learn it and improve it for your use.

Remember:

Individuals and interactions?over processes and tools, Working software?over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration?over contract negotiation, Responding to change?over following a plan

Bonus content: