Tips for writing good user stories

using Use cases, Gherkin, As-Is To-be techniques

Sometimes writing a proper User Story or an Epic description can be really challenging. Since you need to spend quite some time thinking about how to make it simple, yet covering all the tiny details that users really care about.

So, how to make your description:

Let’s have a look into a few examples of User Stories and their specifics.

Written-word use cases in Unified Modeling Language (UML) are very powerful when preparing a User Story or an Epic, where the level of detail and covering multiple steps is a key to bringing the end-user value.

The key terms are:

Use case- collection of related scenarios;

Actors - anyone or anything interacting with the system;

Pre-conditions- conditions that happen before the use case starts;

Post-conditions- conditions that happen after the use case ends;

Main success scenarios- happy paths while interacting with the system;

Alternative scenarios - deviations from the happy paths.

Often each use case has one success scenario and several alternative scenarios. However, this is more of a recommendation, than a rule.

Since Epics incorporate a larger scope, it’s valid to have several success scenarios and a single list of alternative scenarios used as acceptance criteria.

Let’s take a look into an example of an Epic description.

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