Leveraging Follow-up Stories in Agile Development

As a product owner passionate about delivering impactful, user-centered products, I’ve always valued feedback as one of the most powerful tools for success. In my experience, a product can only thrive when the needs of its users continuously shape it. This philosophy has guided my approach to product development—where agility, creativity, and a relentless focus on improvement are key drivers.

However, in the course of development, a common discussion often arises: “Is this a bug or a story?” It’s a question that many teams, stakeholders, and customers grapple with, and while it might seem like a simple classification, it reflects the complexity of refining a product in an Agile environment. Bugs address technical flaws, while stories offer the opportunity to enhance and adapt the product based on user expectations.

In the same way a sculptor refines their work through multiple iterations, our agile development thrives on feedback-driven refinement. Follow-up stories allow us to fine-tune the product after initial releases, turning user insights into valuable enhancements.

Our product journey is like a sculptor refining a work of art. We begin with a solid foundation, but we only uncover areas that need refinement through real-world interaction and user feedback. Follow-up stories (While I use the term follow-up story in this article, it’s essentially a regular story - a deliverable artifact in our development process. The term follow-up simply highlights that the change originated from user feedback or a prior release, making its purpose and context clearer.) act as our chisels, enabling us to iteratively improve and shape the product to meet evolving user needs, ultimately ensuring long-term success.

Over time, I’ve observed the importance of distinguishing between simple issues like bugs and deeper opportunities for enhancement based on user feedback. This document outlines why I believe follow-up stories are a powerful, forward-thinking approach that keeps our SaaS product flexible, customer-focused, and ahead of the competition.

General overview

In our agile Scrum development process for the Knowledge Portal, the ESE API, the Buddy, and the Field Service Apps, we utilize follow-up stories to address user feedback and refine features post-release. While traditional bug fixes and maintenance tasks play a role, follow-up stories allow us to take user insights and drive continuous product enhancement, ensuring features evolve to meet actual user needs and improve satisfaction. It enables us, to learn, adapt our view, test variations, and more.

This method fosters greater alignment between business objectives, our OKR, and customer experience, ensuring long-term product success.

And damn, that is valuable!

While some may see the exposure of unmet expectations or unclear requirements post-release as a mistake, in an agile environment, it’s actually a key strength. Unlike traditional models that aim for perfection in a single launch, we embrace real-world feedback to drive continuous improvement. This iterative process allows us to adapt swiftly to user needs, prioritize features that provide real value, and optimize resources by focusing on what matters most to our customers.

Rather than striving for perfection upfront—an often unrealistic goal - we value rapid learning and responsiveness. This approach ensures that we stay competitive, adaptable, and user-focused, turning initial gaps into opportunities for enhancement.

For any company aiming for long-term success, this flexibility is invaluable. It transforms the product to meet evolving market demands and builds a product that truly aligns with your user's expectations.

Explanation of Process

In the agile landscape, it is common for initial product releases to expose new areas for improvement based on how users interact with the product. This feedback often reveals more than bugs; it highlights unmet expectations or unclear requirements that were not fully captured during the initial development.

Our Process

1. Feature Release: A new feature is developed based on existing requirements and assumptions.
2. User Feedback: After the feature is released, users provide feedback, sometimes pointing out areas where the functionality or user experience doesn’t fully meet their expectations.
3. Analysis: We assess the feedback. If the issue is due to an incomplete or misunderstood requirement (as opposed to a malfunction), we create a follow-up story rather than a bug.
4. Refinement: The follow-up story is then worked on in subsequent sprints, allowing us to enhance the feature or clarify the user experience without detracting from other development priorities.
5. Iteration: This process is repeated, ensuring the product continually improves based on user needs and feedback.

Pros and Cons

When deciding between follow-up stories and other forms of issue resolution, it's essential to weigh both the benefits and the challenges that come with this approach. Follow-up stories offer a dynamic way to respond to user feedback, iterating on features to better meet customer needs. However, as with any strategy, there are trade-offs. Below, I’ll break down the pros and cons of using follow-up stories in Agile SaaS development, highlighting why this approach can be both highly effective and occasionally challenging.

Comparison to Other SaaS Vendors

When looking at other prominent SaaS vendors, I see a range of approaches to user-reported issues and feedback. Each approach has its merits, but I believe that our strategy of using follow-up stories strikes the right balance between responsiveness and long-term product enhancement.

Check out what I understood from three big players:

Atlassian - Feature Enhancement Focus

Atlassian uses follow-up stories to refine features based on user feedback. Their frequent iterative updates, such as improvements to Jira’s interface, reflect their focus on enhancing the user experience by quickly responding to customer feedback. This aligns closely with our philosophy of continuous iteration.

Slack - Bug Fix Focus

Slack often prioritizes bug fixes over follow-up stories, ensuring that the platform remains stable and functional. For instance, issues like notification bugs were treated with hotfixes, but this approach sometimes overlooks the need for deeper feature enhancement based on evolving user requirements.

Salesforce - Maintenance-Oriented Approach

Salesforce addresses issues as part of their regular maintenance cycles, which are bundled into larger, less frequent updates. While this ensures system stability and long-term performance, it can leave users waiting for enhancements that could otherwise be delivered more iteratively.

Our Approach

By integrating both bug fixes for immediate issues and follow-up stories for refinement, we ensure that our product evolves with user needs while maintaining a strong focus on long-term customer satisfaction. This method allows us to be more agile than Salesforce, and more user-responsive than Slack, while maintaining the iterative development strength of Atlassian.

Final Conclusions: Why We Use Follow-up Stories

In today’s fast-paced SaaS and app environment, success comes from adaptability, customer insight, and a commitment to continuous improvement. By leveraging follow-up stories, we ensure that we are not just fixing problems but also creating opportunities for product evolution based on real user feedback.

This approach fosters a culture of iteration and responsiveness, where users feel heard, and our product continually improves. It allows us to enhance our product beyond the initial scope of a feature, transforming confusion or unmet expectations into new opportunities for innovation and growth. This aligns perfectly with our agile values of continuous delivery, customer collaboration, and flexibility.

success comes from adaptability, customer insight, and a commitment to continuous improvement

In the same way, a sculptor refines their work through multiple iterations, our agile development thrives on feedback-driven refinement. Follow-up stories allow us to fine-tune the product after initial releases, turning user insights into valuable enhancements. This approach ensures that our product continues to evolve and improve, much like a sculptor shaping a masterpiece.