What I learn from 011 talk: "Death by User Stories" by Jenny Martin

BDDX ’2016 in London OOPSI MODEL

It was an very interesting talk which focus on OOPSI model as way to do user stories and epics. It is a very interesting approach to describe work to do. OOPSI model shows one of the approaches to describe project.

What I learn from this talk?

• According to Jenny, user stories can be dangerous, because stories can be like virus. Virus has only one purpose, to reproduce. It multiplying until they overwhelm delivery. It is called a creeping scope.
• Jenny used very interesting definition of acceptance criteria:  "Acceptance criteria define the boundaries of a user story,and are used to confirm when a story is completed and working as intended."  For Jenny, problem with them is that they looks like stories too.
• I like this definition, For me Acceptance criteria verify understanding of task and define when a story is completed with enough confidence.
• Catching large amount of users stories (as Jira ticket or post it note) on beginning on project is not  good use of time, because we cannot do enough analysis. It generates massive backlog that is not good use of time either.  it is  difficult to manage , many of these tickets nobody cares and they will be thrown away in the end. Many people doing this mistake of explosion of stories and output is similar or the same as  in waterfall.
• I called this water-scrum-fall problem where we are using agile tools but we still deliver project in waterfall style.
• Good thing about user stories are:
• Act as a token for conversation, to discover value.
• Helps us deliver things in smaller chunks, so that we can get value earlier.
• Help us track and estimates work
• Stories are to helps us understand what awesome outcome looks like.
• Stories in Oopsi contains following components:
• Outcome - it helps us focus on value and impact of the project that is describe as “In Order to xxx, As a xxx, I need xxx” (based on impact mapping)
• Output - Illustrate output with examples without details but with general case
• Process - where we split into Activities (linear)  tasks
• Scenarios - Given,When,Then . A different path though process to generate the outputs (test cases)
• Inputs - Inputs (concrete example and living documentation). Input and data needed to drive the scenarios.  Like test conditions or detailed examples.
• Story mapping. It helps you to describe epic and split into deliverable chunks. Look for the picture of incremental delivery by henrik kniberg delivery to help you picture this point. ( http://blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2014-10-07-at-08.20.00.png ) where from his blog when he talking about .
• Other things that was mention in this talk:
• Documentation is treat as a rude word in agile
• Oopsi in reverse looks like  “Is poo”.

I think, there  are many  bits and pieces that can be useful to use in the place where I work now as in my opinion, it will help deliver project smoother. Describing output through conversation  drives whole process into deliverable chunks of work. Story mapping is a technique that can help you do that. Oopsi can help you to have living documentation