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Re: Top-down User Stories
by William Pietri
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Ron Jeffries wrote:
> Hello, Jana. On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 9:18:50 AM, you wrote:
>
>
>> I like this strategy, but I have a nagging suspicion that this is not an
>> Agile methodology. Shouldn't the User Stories be created in a bottom-up
>> fashion in Agile?
>>
>
> I'd think not. User stories have business value. Business people
> need to decide that. Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by
> bottom-up, however.
What I'm guessing she means is a way where the whole team collaborates
on deciding what to build, rather than it all flowing from on high. I
definitely have seen some agile teams working that way successfully.
One of the drawbacks of the classic XP approach, where the XP Customer
is the only source of business value decisions, is that developers often
don't feel engaged in that part of the process. For some people that's
fine, but some developers really want to participate in product
planning. That's especially true out here in the SF area, where
developers are often also users, or own substantial portions of the
company, or both.
There are a variety of ways to achieve that engagement, including
Google's 20% time and hack days, both of which give developers a chance
to build the things they think are important. But a little give and take
in the planning process is enough for some shops. A team at YouTube I
interviewed, for example, treats the major business goals (as expressed
in quarterly Objectives and Key Results plans) as primary, but devotes
some time to secondary goals chosen by the team.
William
> Hello, Jana. On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 9:18:50 AM, you wrote:
>
>
>> I like this strategy, but I have a nagging suspicion that this is not an
>> Agile methodology. Shouldn't the User Stories be created in a bottom-up
>> fashion in Agile?
>>
>
> I'd think not. User stories have business value. Business people
> need to decide that. Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by
> bottom-up, however.
What I'm guessing she means is a way where the whole team collaborates
on deciding what to build, rather than it all flowing from on high. I
definitely have seen some agile teams working that way successfully.
One of the drawbacks of the classic XP approach, where the XP Customer
is the only source of business value decisions, is that developers often
don't feel engaged in that part of the process. For some people that's
fine, but some developers really want to participate in product
planning. That's especially true out here in the SF area, where
developers are often also users, or own substantial portions of the
company, or both.
There are a variety of ways to achieve that engagement, including
Google's 20% time and hack days, both of which give developers a chance
to build the things they think are important. But a little give and take
in the planning process is enough for some shops. A team at YouTube I
interviewed, for example, treats the major business goals (as expressed
in quarterly Objectives and Key Results plans) as primary, but devotes
some time to secondary goals chosen by the team.
William
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