User Stories, a Substitute for Requirements
Question: Are user stories a substitute for requirements?
No. User stories are a concept suggested in the 1990s by Dr. Alistair Cockburn and associated initially with eXtreme Programming (XP).
User stories are subject to diverse and contradicting interpretations, making it difficult to judge what a user story is.
Here are some examples:
- "A user story is a promise for a conversation." (Dr. Alistair Cockburn)
- "A user story is an informal, natural language description of features of a software system."
- "A user story captures what the user wants to do with the system at a high level."
- "A user story is just a fancy term for a functional requirement."
- "A user story is focused on what purpose do features have."
- "A user story is a requirement expressed from the perspective of an end-user goal."
- "A user story user stories are initial demands of the customer."
- "A user story describes a certain function of the future product."
- "A user story is a story about something a user is trying to achieve."
Given the different definitions and perspectives, it is not surprising that competing syntax and format variations are being offered to express a user story.
Even with all the different interpretations, for the most part, user stories do not represent the levels of information that requirements do.
Constraints, rationals, sources, information about uncertainty and assumptions; all the vital information which can be included if needed with requirements, is lacking from user stories.
In the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™, a market-driven approach, there is a clear and consistent terminology that denotes three types of requirements:
- Market Requirements describe the market problem.
- Product Requirements describe the solution.
- Technical Requirements describe the solution's technical implementation.
PMTK views the topic of "requirements" as a robust and proven technique for representing different levels of information required for product delivery.
Developed by Blackblot, the Blackblot Procedural Requirements Management™ Model (PRM Model) is a methodology to create high-quality, usable market and product requirements.
The Blackblot Procedural Requirements Management™ Model (PRM Model) is taught in the Procedural Requirements Management™ (PRM) during the Blackblot Strategic Product Manager™ (SPMR) course.