How to determine and describe the value of user story (2)

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How many types of user stories value

To determine the benefits of user stories more easily, it is necessary to classify a list of common value patterns. There 2 main types mentioned below:

• Financial benefits: increase revenue, save costs, increase cash flow and increase profits.
• Non-financial benefits: satisfy customers, engage employees, reduce risk, build brand identity and company image, enhance productivity and improve service quality.

According to the above classification, we have some following patterns:

• Growth: more revenue, more customers and more employees.
• Saving: less cost, less effort, less time and less personal.
• Proactive: estimate the situation to plan and make decisions.
• Mounting: motivate employees and retain customers.
• Control: optimal adjustment, avoid loss and waste.
• Advertising: increase brand identity.
• Avoid risks: comply with laws, monitor death thresholds.
• Decision-making: capture information, analyze the data that has been decided.

Examples of User Stories Benefits

• "As a credit card user, I would like to be notified immediately if there is a spending activity. This will help me to know if someone steals my money in the credit card. So I can lock it as soon as possible to avoid losing money.
• "As marketing, I want customers to earn reward points when they introduce the website to their friends. This will help me to have new customers.
• "As a warehouse manager, I want to see the selling velocity so that I can predict the time of low stock threshold when it is broken. This will help me decide to make a purchase order timely to avoid having an empty stock of product. Lack of product will cause a loss of business opportunities.
• “As a CEO, I want to see a health report of the company, so that I can make a decision.” If a product owner understands this user story, he will survey more detail about what health index is the most important to the CEO. Because there are too many health indexes, the CEO only care about some of the most important indexes according to the current strategy. After investigation, the product owner will design a simple chart with some most important index.

Understanding User Stories Values help to design Products

By understanding the benefits in a user story, the development team can take the initiative in designing features. These features are determined in the best practices and fastest way to respond directly and accurately the user need.

Any features, which do not serve the benefit of user stories, will not be developed. It avoids wastage and reduces requirements changes.

For example:

• "As a blind person, I want to have an obstacle warning device to help me not get into an accident.” If you understand this purpose, you will design a product which has features to alert from a specific minimum distance. Because if the warning is late, the man will not be able to avoid the obstacle causing the accident. Having the ability to alert and measure distance will consider some technological capabilities of hardware and sensors. These allow detection of sight objects from a specific range.
• "As a cashier at the store, I want to highlight the total amount which a client has to pay to save service duration. This value requires the total amount of money to be large and clear on the screen instead of appearing small. Because a lurking number takes the cashier to much time to find the last amount by rolling and scanning the screen. Actually, at the cash register of some supermarket, there is a digital screen facing the customer which shows the total amount of money.
• "As a student, I want to see my scores on a single screen to know the rankings for competition planning". With this value, it is necessary to design the total score and the rank compared to the other students rather than displaying the score of each subject. This case helps to avoid a wrong design plan.
• "As a student, I want to see my course scores on a screen so I can submit my sheet to get a job". With this value, the design solution will show a transcript. This transcript can be printed out in a beautiful template. This also can be sent online with a public access link instead of forcing the employer to log in.
• “As a pilot, I want to see the altitude of my plane so I can change the high according to air traffic control”. This benefit tells the designer that, he must make an altitude monitor with a threshold. If the plane flight down below the threshold or flight up above the threshold, he will be given a red alert notification.
• “As a cashier, I want to have petty cash management features so that I can avoid losing money”. If you understand about perry cash management, you know that a cashier worries about losing money because of some error while putting money in or taking money out. If they forget to input some transaction records, the total money will differ from their reality on-hand cash. Therefore, as a product owner, you must make a function which requires the cashier input the number of their on-hand cash and compares to make sure this number must equal to total money recorded in the system. If these numbers are different, the functions must validate and avoid closing the ending balance of petty cash. This approach will help the cashier immediately to detect that he forget some transaction. In this situation, he must find exactly which transaction forgotten by him.

Conclusion

In summary, understanding the values and benefits of user stories probably will help a product owner make decisions on the design plan and the appropriate approaching. It maximizes the value and minimizes the cost of the solution.

There is another problem about how to discover the true benefits of customer requirement.