User stories: a comprehensive guide

In this guide, we’re going to explore just how a user story helps us develop features in a way that maximizes both user and client satisfaction.

The term “user stories” is a little misleading. When we think of a story, we often think of long, drawn-out prose or biography. However, this is not the case with user stories in the agile world, where most are little more than a statement or a sentence that guides us when using our wireframe tool.

What is a user story?

User story writing is a technique that’s frequently deployed in agile projects to help build software that solves problems for its users as fast and efficiently as possible. User stories generally consist of a brief statement of a goal from the point of view of a user persona that normally consists of one simple sentence.

Benefits of user stories

• Break work up into manageable tasks
• Help organize agile sprints
• Something to test
• Prioritize work to maximize profit

The goal the user has in each story represents a feature that we need to build into our product. Agile teams create user stories as they are a way of breaking down feature development into small chunks and prioritizing the features that matter the most.

The user story layout

Design wireframes and prototypes that bring to life your user stories

The way agile teams write user stories often varies across different organizations and teams. To successfully write user stories, you should always take the following elements into account to provide a comprehensive picture for your team of what exactly is needed at each stage of the product development.