Are User Stories The Same as Requirements? - Mike Cohn

Are user stories the same as requirements? Not quite, but they’re close.

Rather than thinking of a user story as a requirement, I find it more useful to think of each story as a pointer to a requirement.

Most commonly, every story is a placeholder for a future conversation between the team and its stakeholders. During that conversation, stakeholders will convey the details about what is needed. If more detail is needed than can be conveyed in a conversation, the story may point to a flow diagram, a sketch of the user interface, sample data, instructions on how to perform a calculation, or so on.

A user story itself is too vague to be considered a requirement. You’re better off thinking of a story as a pointer to a requirement.

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Top 5 Things We Do Incorrectly in Product Discovery

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Agile Does NOT Mean ZERO Planning...

Before diving into how I managed planning for this project, it’s important to understand what a plan is and the role of agile planning.

A PLAN is a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. It’s like a beacon, offering stakeholders a clear vision and placing realistic expectations. It can project a rough timeline for marketing activities, too. The book Agile Estimating and Planning, by Mike Cohn introduces plans as guidance to investment decisions, helping us know who needs to be available to work on a project during a given time and if a project is on track to deliver the functionalities that the user(s) may need and expect. In short, plans usually take the form of documents or figures. They are a big picture of how a project is supposed to unfold.

PLANNING, however, is a quest for value. It is an activity done continuously responding to the feedback from users. Planning helps the team adjust their original plan towards the final destination. To serve different purposes, product teams structure and frame different levels of planning. In a fast-paced world, Agile teams achieve this by planning at three horizons — the release, the iteration, and the current day.

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How Can I Speak At A Conference? - AgileDadSpeaks.Com

Join V. Lee Henson for this Agile Not so Agile episode of The Daily Standup Podcast where he discusses what it takes to speak at Industry-wide conferences and the joy that it can bring in uplifting others!

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The Top 10 AI Tools For Agile Project Managers:

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Avoid Overloading Your Sprints - Mike Cohn

Someone asked me the other day, “Is there a maximum size for a sprint backlog item?” The simple answer is yes. A team should not bring any item that is more than half of its average velocity into an iteration.
As an example, if a team’s average velocity is 30, and the team estimates using the Fibonacci series, the maximum size sprint backlog item would be 13.
 

In general, I’d like items much smaller than that. But half of the average velocity is the max.
 

To understand why large items create problems, consider a recent experience I had at a hotel. My room was on the 15th floor. That floor also had a handful of meeting rooms, each of which looked as if it held around 20 people.
 

One afternoon, I left my room and went to the bank of elevators. Unfortunately, this was seconds after the meetings let out, sending hoards of attendees surging out of the meeting rooms. I suddenly found myself waiting for the elevator with perhaps 70 other people.
 

Those elevators, each with a capacity of around 10 people, were not designed for a sudden need to transport 70 people. They were designed instead to transport individuals or small groups of 2, 3, 4 or 5.
 

Each sprint is like an elevator. It’s very effective when you load your sprints up with a set of small items. Put something large into a sprint, though, and work can back up just like passengers waiting for an elevator.
 

But what if the team needs to bring in something bigger in a certain sprint?

My first recommendation is to attempt to split the item into smaller items. (I wrote about 5 simple ways to split stories. Try those first.)

If you can’t split it, go ahead and bring the large item into the sprint but balance its largeness by bringing in some much smaller items. Doing so will smooth the flow of work from one skill to another, such as from programmers to testers.

Keeping things smaller will smooth the flow of work through an iteration, and will help you succeed with agile.

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The Top AI Tools For Product Managers:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoYxTrSg7WvRTz_2C1OAnHC2fkWTcQyxx

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People Don't Buy Your Product... They Buy YOU!

For this one.. You just need to listen.

~ Lee

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The Product Owner - Steering the Team to Success

Imagine a world where requirements are constantly changing, priorities are shifting, and stakeholders are never satisfied. Sounds like a nightmare, right? Well, that’s where the Product Owner steps in like a superhero to save the day.

The Product Owner is like the captain of a ship in Agile development. They steer the team in the right direction, prioritize work, and ensure that the end product meets the needs of the customers. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it!

To be a successful Product Owner, you need a unique set of skills. Here are a few that are essential:

Being a Product Owner is not all rainbows and unicorns. There are challenges that come with the job, such as:

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