Week 2 Flashcards
(29 cards)
What is a story?
Users describe what they want the system to do when they perform a specific action. Each action is called a story. Each action just does one thing.
What are epics?
Stories that are too large. Epics can be broken down into smaller stories.
What is a story card?
It’s a piece of card, about 1/4 of an A4 sheet of paper.
Store info in an easy, accessible way.
Prevents too much documentation.
Delays decisions - details are deferred until they are needed
What info does the story card contain on the front and back of the card?
Front: story name, short description of the user story, conversations between the developer about the story.
Back: series of tests. If all tests work then the story has been completed. This is a test-driven approach.
Why are tests so important?
The capture exceptions and provide an acceptance test for the story.
When is a story considered to be finished?
When it has passed all acceptance tests.
How do you manage stories properly?
- Stories should be closed once they’re finished
- Focus on near goals
- Keep the UI out of the code for as long as possible
What is a paper prototype?
Designing the user interface with a series of mockups
What are features of good stories?
- independent of other stories to avoid confusion
- negotiable
- valuable to users or customers, but not developers
- estimable
- small but not too small
- testable
What is a spike?
A spike is a story that is specified by the developers, rather than the users, to learn more about the issues.
Can very small stories such as bug fixes be combined into a single story?
Yes, it’s easier to estimate the time for a group of bug fixes rather than one
How do you find a story?
Identify user roles. What would each user want to do? Each action is a separate story.
What is the main purpose of a user role?
To generate stories. Many different users can have the same role, and so are treated the same.
Why are non-human system roles useful?
If another computer system will interact with our system, then it will generate stories.
What are internal stories?
Developer written stories. Not provided by a user. Developers generate spikes.
How are user roles recorded?
User roles are recorded on an index card or on e.g. Jira.
The name of the role Frequency of use Domain expertise Computer expertise Software expertise Goals
How do you find user roles?
User roles are brainstormed by the team. Each member of the team thinks of user roles independently and writes cards for them.
Organise the initial set by overlapping cards where roles overlap.
Consolidate roles, removing duplicates.
Refine roles by adding details
What are personas?
It’s sometimes useful to invent a person or several people, to represent a user role. This often makes it easier to guess some details when implementing a user
What are extreme personas used for?
Boundary cases. These can reveal rare bugs.
What are user proxies?
Sometimes real users are not available but some other person from the organisation is. They can provide inaccurate data.
When should acceptance tests be written?
Before coding
What is a backlog?
A collection of all stories, including epics, is called the project backlog.
What is an iteration backlog?
Stories that have been assigned to an iteration and are yet to be worked on.
What are story points?
The amount of effort required to complete a user story.
