Mistakes Product Managers Make When Writing User Stories
While developers and project managers are familiar with their target audiences in broad strokes, that familiarity often remains surface-level. Whether you work in a startup or in a large corporation with multiple teams coordinating on the project, user stories can help guide your process. User stories represent a simple yet effective way to steer the direction of your development project (whether app or website) to resonate with its audience.
However, due to the nature of software development and product management as a whole, writing user stories can sometimes feel like an unnecessary bother. This inevitably leads to mistakes and misconceptions which can reflect on the final product’s quality and overall performance on the market. Thus, let’s take a look at a true product manager role to resolve several crucial mistakes that product managers make in regards to user stories and how you can benefit from them.
User Stories Writing Mistakes
- User Stories are Too Complex
The first and most common complaint software developers have in regards to user stories is related to their complexity. Rather, user stories should be as short and informative as possible instead of taking up several sentences or an entire paragraph.
Single-sentence user stories can also be accompanied by 1 to 3-word titles which can be used to quickly scan through different references during development. Product managers should aim to eliminate fluff in user stories they write before presenting them to the team for further development.
2. User Stories Lack Personality
The goal of using user stories in development is to give your team members a beacon to follow in regards to UX personalization. However, writing a user story and referring to your product’s user as “user”, will likely fail to achieve that effect.
You can personalize your user stories by creating simple yet creative personalities during a team-building meeting as a group exercise. That way, a “user” will become “Simon the Architect” or “Rebecca the Lawyer” instead of a non-individual, blank slate for developers to use as a reference.
3. User Stories are out of Sight
Product development will rarely be successful if there is no trust or communication between team members 24/7. Once user stories are used in active development, they should be present throughout the process without excuse.
Whiteboards, sticky notes, and other physical reference points can be utilized to ensure that user stories are clearly visible at any moment. This will ensure that everyone on the team has the same user story writing in front of them and help the team avoid miscommunication.
4. User Stories are Too Technical
When it comes to writing user stories, it’s best to focus on the benefits and practicalities of using your product rather than its technical specifications. Even though your team of developers might be familiar with industry-specific terminology, user stories should represent the way stakeholders interact with the final product.
User stories that are open-ended will give developers more freedom to experiment and present new ideas to the team before implementing the right ones. Keep your user stories grounded in day-to-day lingo and avoid vague or niche terminology to ensure no confusion happens during development.
5. User Stories are One-Sided
The difference between a product manager and a software developer should, in practice, be in the title alone. Product managers should treat their team members as equals and coworkers with their own ideas, feedback and thoughts on where the product can go next.
The same applies to user stories, as they should be created in a group and not simply passed down from the manager onto the team. This will enable developers to identify with and own the stories you write, just as the users are supposed to identify with the final product.
User Story Template to Follow
A common misconception attributed to user stories is that they are too difficult or complex to write effectively — quite the contrary in fact. A user story has to include three basic elements to serve its purpose in guiding your project: a user, a goal, and a need. Let’s take a look at a user story that follows this flow of information. In our case, we are developing a software app centered on email marketing.
“As a graphic designer, I want to inform my clients of new design trends often, so that I can build my reputation.”
As we can see, this user story informs us that a designer might want to send emails regularly to his clients. This would inform our developers to pay close attention to email automation and mail list management features in the software application. You can rely on such writing tools as Trust My Paper, Evernote, or Best Essay Education to write and format your user story templates more efficiently. Introducing various user story templates to your project early on will allow different team members to ideate and come up with user stories independently.
Advantages of Writing Proper User Stories
By following a standardized template, you will allow the development team to quickly jump between tasks and contribute to the project more meaningfully. Now that we have an idea of which mistakes to avoid in regards to writing user stories, why should we use them at all?
Nigel Timothy, a Content Writing Specialist at Supreme Dissertations, spoke on the topic recently: “User stories represent the most direct way to empathize with our stakeholders. Whether it’s UI writing, programming, or customer support, the development of each of these processes requires identification with the end-users’ wants and needs. Failing to write user stories for a development cycle can severely hinder the product’s overall appeal, leading to the dissonance between your team and user base.”
Presenting your team with user stories that reflect the final user adequately will improve the development time and UX of your product significantly. Apart from that, some of the most concrete benefits your development process will experience include:
- Creativity and brainstorming as cornerstones of the development process
- Objective, identifiable goals and milestones for developers to follow
- Higher emphasis on internal team communication, feedback and problem-solving
- Ability to prioritize tasks and develop product features based on individual user stories
- Higher user satisfaction, brand advocacy, and ROI post-launch
Adopt and Adapt (Conclusion)
The crux of user story writing mistakes happens because of miscommunication and lack of teamwork during the development process. User stories are not wise to be passed down from product manager to developer — they are a form of narrative goal-setting methodology.
Treating user stories as an extension of KPIs and milestones you’ve created to guide the project forward will ensure their usefulness in the process. Adopt the ideas presented by your team and adapt them into user stories you can all be proud of as a group — the results will speak for themselves.
