The Use and Effectiveness of User Stories in Practice

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    Abstract

    [Context and motivation] User stories are an increasingly popular textual notation to capture requirements in agile software development. [Question/Problem] To date there is no scientific evidence on the effectiveness of user stories. The goal of this paper is to explore how practicioners perceive this artifact in the context of requirements engineering. [Principal ideas/results] We explore perceived effectiveness of user stories by reporting on a survey with 182 responses from practitioners and 21 follow-up semi-structured interviews. The data shows that practitioners agree that using user stories, a user story template and quality guidelines such as the INVEST mnemonic improve their productivity and the quality of their work deliverables. [Contribution] By combining the survey data with 21 semi-structured follow-up interviews, we present 12 findings on the usage and perception of user stories by practitioners that employ user stories in their everyday work environment.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationRequirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality
    Subtitle of host publication22nd International Working Conference, REFSQ 2016, Gothenburg, Sweden, March 14-17, 2016, Proceedings
    PublisherSpringer
    Pages205-222
    Number of pages18
    ISBN (Electronic)978-3-319-30282-9
    ISBN (Print)978-3-319-30281-2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2016

    Publication series

    NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
    Number9619

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