SPA Conference session: Bringing User Stories to Life | |||
| One-line description: | If you’ve ever seen (and despaired) about user stories, you must’ve thought, “what’s the point?”. There must be a better way to share ideas than this… | ||
| Session format: | 150 min Hands on workshop - th [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | As a manager I want to manage So I can manage things If you’ve ever seen (and despaired) about user stories similar to the above, you must’ve thought, “what’s the point?”. There must be a better way to share ideas than this… Well there is! And Gemma Cameron is here to show us how. Bring some of your own user stories to this session and we will transform them into rich, vibrant, creative expressions that more effectively communicate the true value and benefits of your product. This is a creative session, but don't worry if you have absolutely no drawing skills! This event is still for you. | ||
| Audience background: | Everyone and of any background. A familiarisation with traditional User Story formats is a nice to have, but not required. For Developers, Project Managers, QA's, BA's... Absolutely anyone involved in creating software. | ||
| Benefits of participating: | Improve the way you communicate with your stakeholders and the rest of the team. | ||
| Materials provided: | Please bring a laptop if you can't draw. If you have neither then stickmen are fine. | ||
| Process: | I'll walk you through my journey and how I came to using comics instead of user stories. Then we'll all have a go at making some fun comics ourselves! You will be working in groups of 4 or 5. | ||
| Detailed timetable: | 00:00-00:05 intro about the speaker and background 00:05-00:10 intro to the project I was working on 00:10-00:15 intro to traditional user stories 00:15-00:30 participants write their own user stories in silence (because we're bad BA's). These are then swapped to other groups and one per group is read out. We then collectively try to work out what the user story is about. 00:30-00:40 Explain how user stories history. How they are a synopsis of a story and a prompt for a conversation. Introduce story telling. 00:40-01:00 Ask people who wrote the user story that was read out to move to the table where it was read. Ask this person to tell a story instead. Someone else in the group has to write it down. Encourage all participants to get involved in the story, ask questions and paint a picture in their head. Each group now reads the story. 01:00-01:10 I go through how I turned these stories into comic strips, and how that benefitted me. I pass around some comic books made for previous companies I've worked for, telling the story as people read. 01:10-01:40 All participants have a go at making their own comics. 01:40-01:50 Have a look at each groups comics. a fun prize is given for the best and time for participants to share ideas on where this might be helpful in their jobs. | ||
| Outputs: | Comics! Could be fun to put these up around the venue, or turn into comic books for attendees of SPA to take. I can bring a printer. | ||
| History: | DDDEurope 2016, CukeUp 2016 | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Gemma Cameron Rubygem of the Internets Ltd |
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