User Story Template
User stories are an industry standard way to express the requirements of different user groups. When possible it can be a good practice to write stories that target a single persona. User stories follow this formula: As a __(user persona)__ I want to __(perform some action)__ so that __(outcome or rationale)__.
This is simply the user persona segment that the story describes
If you find yourself writing a lot of "as any user" stories, keep in mind an emerging trend toward incorporating Job Stories, which substitute a "when" scenario for the persona and reflect a more pragmatic (some argue more "why" driven) way of expressing requirements.
With Userforge you can document user actions as either user stories or job stories!
Keep actions short and to the point. When exported, into PM software, these will be the "summary" line and so should stand alone to orient a reader to the core of the functionality.
This is where the "why" of the feature or functionality can begin to be expressed. It may be necessary to express practical outcomes, but often these are better listed as Acceptance Criteria
As noted above, job stories substitute this "When" statement for the persona or user-group reference. Userforge also allows the "When" to be specified as an optional enhancement to user stories.
Because opinions and preferences vary between things like "I want to" vs. "I can," each workspace can be configured to use different elements in place of the defaults. This may also serve to enable stories in some non-English languages when grammatical structures are sufficiently similar.
Acceptance Criteria (a/c for short) express the minutiae of a feature and can become quite granular. The more complex a story is, the greater its need for some detailed a/c to ensure clarity and common understanding.
Too many or overly complex acceptance criteria may indicate an opportunity to break large stories into several smaller ones.
Userforge also provides several "Additional Info" sidebar options to enrich stories. These make space for research insights and production notes that add relevant context without cluttering the core story.
User stories can be downloaded via .csv file for easy external reference or to import into a spreadsheet or project management software other than Jira. We'd love to hear from you re: other integrations you'd like to see.
From the filtered view, when you click the + button, the story creation form will open with the filters applied -- in this case pre-mapped to the location:
You can also map stories to additional map locations or cancel the auto-linkage by removing the tag
Don't have a workspace yet? Create a free demo account
