Engage your team 

Increase velocity 

Split ANY large story

And deliver more value... faster

Got a Question?

Discover and Deliver What Customers Really Want

The 9 Modules of Better User Stories

What Stories Are

This module walks you through why user stories are so important, and looks at some of the key functions that are too often overlooked. This is the perfect refresher of the important foundations of user stories, and makes a great communication tool for explaining their importance to team members and stakeholders.

What Stories Are

MODULE 1

MODULE 1

Users, User Roles and Personas

Many complex projects need to service the needs of multiple users. The sheer amount of variables within and across different users makes this a challenge. This module shows you how to clearly define stories for different user groups without getting bogged down in too much detail, or missing key functionality.

Users, User Roles and Personas

MODULE 2

MODULE 2

Story-Mapping and Story-Writing Workshops

If you don’t know how to run a successful story-writing workshop you can end up with an expensive, time-wasting exercise that doesn’t tell you how to deliver what a customer really wants. This module guides you step-by-step in how to run a great workshop so you can highlight gaps, prioritize tasks and choose only the stories that must be present to achieve the minimum viable product.

Story-Mapping and Story-Writing Workshops

MODULE 3

MODULE 3

Adding Detail with Conditions of Satisfaction of Acceptance Criteria

There is a systematic way of making sure that you have enough detail, at the right time without stifling creativity. In this module you'll solve the confusion around Epics and Themes. You'll learn practical approached for adding details including knowing when to stop and how to handle a team that wants too much detail. You'll also be able to stop stories from turning into non-agile stage-gate placeholders. 

Adding Detail with Conditions of Satisfaction or Acceptance Criteria

MODULE 4

MODULE 4

INVEST in Good Stories

The INVEST acronym: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Sized Appropriately and Testable is an invaluable tool for writing a strong user story. The challenge is knowing how to practically apply all of the individual elements. This module breaks down each one so that the process is clear, increasing the chance that teams adopt the method, and write stories that meet all the criteria.

MODULE 5

MODULE 5

INVEST in Good Stories

Splitting Stories

This entire module is devoted to the most vexing and time-consuming issues surrounding splitting stories. One of the biggest problems is making sense of the myriad of advice on this subject. You don’t need 20 different ways to split a story, you need a focused, proven and practical method. The SPIDR approach looks at the most critical and valuable channels for splitting stories. This means you and your team can bring stories into an iteration that can be completed independently, and show meaningful progress to stakeholders.

MODULE 6

MODULE 6

Splitting Stories

Overcoming Common Problems

This troubleshooting module covers the most common problems I’ve helped teams overcome. From spending too much time splitting stories, adding too much detail, to managing the need for a requirements document. This module helps you eliminate issues as they arise, making it easier to transition teams and make them more comfortable in adopting user stories.

MODULE 7

MODULE 7

Overcoming Common Problems

Things That Are Not User Stories

User stories seem simple. But because they are not lengthy documents with an endless checklist of requirements, teams run the risk of misinterpreting the rules. The result can be creating user stories that aren’t actually user stories. They may be feature lists, or job stories, bugs or non-functional requirements. These subjects are important to a project, but you need to handle them in the correct way to avoid problems further down the line.

MODULE 8

MODULE 8

Things That Are Not User Stories

Wrap Up and Review

In this final module, we’ll review the course and look at how you can apply what you’ve learned going forward.

MODULE 9

MODULE 9

Wrap Up and Review

We're so confident in our products that we happily make you a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee.

Invest Risk-Free With our 30-day Money Back Guarantee

Mike Cohn, CST
Mountain Goat Software

One of the industry's most well respected Certified Scrum Trainers (CST)

Learn Scrum and agile processes directly from Mike Cohn, one of the industry's most well respected Certified Scrum Trainers (CST). Mike Cohn is the author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, Agile Estimating and Planning, and Succeeding with Agile. He is a co-founder and former board member of the Scrum Alliance, and a co-founder of the non-profit Agile Alliance, home of the Agile Manifesto.

Meet Mike Cohn

One of the industry's most well respected Certified Scrum Trainers (CST)

"What stories do I work on when EVERYTHING seems urgent and important?"