User Stories is a really simple idea.

It's a Story. Written from the perspective of a User of your software. Describing What the user wants to do and Why.

User Stories solve two problems for us.

The first problem is Documents. Documents are invaluable. But documents also suck. Shared Documents are not Shared Understanding. Just because it's written down doesn't mean we really understand what those documents are intended to communicate.

The second problem is Focus. There is always too much to build. Stories help us focus on who, what and why, so that we can minimise output and do the highest value work first.

Further Reading

If you enjoyed this topic, here's a few more you might like to think about.

• Opportunity Canvas
• Story Mapping