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Charles Bradley - Scrum Coach CSM PSM I | 1 Apr 2011 04:20

User Story Maturity

Hi,

I'm working on a User Story Maturity Survey of sorts, and I'd be interested on others' thoughts.

User Story Maturity Survey
 
Points    Practice      
15* 3 Components/2 Must Haves (* Required)      
15   PO 100% Allocated to the team as PO
5     PO Co-located(Talking Distance)      
10   Weekly Backlog Grooming
10   Multiple Acceptance Testing Styles(4+)      
5     Immediate Story Signoff(Within 1 day)      
20   Small Stories (2-3 days for one person or a pair)      
20   Acceptance Tests 90+% Automated      

Score    User Story Maturity Level      
25-39    Beginning Team      
40-89    Intermediate Team      
90+      Advanced Team     

If you do the practice generally 90% of the time, then give yourself the points for that practice, otherwise don't give yourself any points for that practice (i.e. no partial credit).

Some Explanation:

-3 Components/2 Must Haves (* Required)      
This means every User Story has the 3 required components. 
    i.e. at least a title, some associated conversations, and acceptance tests/examples defined in at least prose/text.
    aka the 3 C's: Card, Conversation, Confirmation
This means that every User Story confirms with 2 Must Have characteristics:
    1.  The story provides direct value to a non dev team stakeholder (i.e. anyone who is not a dev on the team)
    2.  The story describes new or changed functionality in the system.

This practice + 10 points garnered from elsewhere, is required to even be a beginning User Stories team.

- Multiple Acceptance Testing Styles
     This means the team uses at least 4 styles of expressing acceptance tests.  This is simply the conceptual form of an acceptance test(i.e. not an automated test) -- some people call this "Hi gh Level Test Cases".

Some Example Styles are:

"Test that..."  ^1
"Test with..."  ^1
Specification By Example
Given/When/Then
Flowcharts
Pictures of White boards
Notes/Bullets on an index card

^1 from Mike Cohn's User Stories book

Please let me know if you need further clarification of any of the practices.
 
-------
Charles Bradley, CSM, PSM I
Experienced Scrum Coach
My blog: http://scrumcrazy.wordpress.com/



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Gil Broza | 1 Apr 2011 05:10
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Rafael Nascimento | 1 Apr 2011 05:25
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Poll: Hours or Story Points?


Hi guys!

Just a small poll:

1. How do you generate your sprint burndown charts? Considering hours or story points?
2. Why?

Cheers!
Rafael Nascimento


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Mark Graybill | 1 Apr 2011 06:25

RE: Poll: Hours or Story Points?

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Story points. By the mere fact of known sprint size and their X axis markers, the time factor is  not lost.  

 

We should want a focus on efforts without the distraction and biasing of time constructs.  People are drawn to using time for the same reasons we are drawn to exhibit a habit.  Given our industry’s poor record of forecasting, we should pause enough to understand the significance of this.

 

To a biopsychologist (neuroscientist) this is obvious; but not to developers.

 

It is also similar to earned value (inversely).  Story points has become popular, but coming from old school of earned value, I’d have preferred using terms with meaning connected to earned value.

 

To be honest, I don’t like the terminology of Scrum and all the other eccentricities of the method – especially the Scrum handshake.  You can also have the barnyard animal names.  But there is a point to all that: poignancy, and to jumpstart a completely new paradigm – one that is worth our attention beyond all others, IMO.

 

Though I started an opponent, my investigation compelled me to advocacy.

 

 

From: scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com [mailto:scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Rafael Nascimento
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 10:25 PM
To: scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com
Subject: [scrumdevelopment] Poll: Hours or Story Points?

 

 


Hi guys!

Just a small poll:

1. How do you generate your sprint burndown charts? Considering hours or story points?
2. Why?

Cheers!
Rafael Nascimento



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Mark Graybill | 1 Apr 2011 06:35

RE: Poll: Hours or Story Points?

xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" xmlns:p="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:powerpoint" xmlns:a="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:access" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:s="uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z="#RowsetSchema" xmlns:b="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:publisher" xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:c="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:component:spreadsheet" xmlns:odc="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:odc" xmlns:oa="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:activation" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40" xmlns:q ="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:rtc="http://microsoft.com/officenet/conferencing" xmlns:D="DAV:" xmlns:Repl="http://schemas.microsoft.com/repl/" xmlns:mt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/meetings/" xmlns:x2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/excel/2003/xml" xmlns:ppda="http://www.passport.com/NameSpace.xsd" xmlns:ois="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/ois/" xmlns:dir="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/directory/" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:dsp="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" xmlns:udc="http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:sub="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/2002/1/alerts/" xmlns:ec="http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#" xmlns:sp="h ttp://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" xmlns:sps="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:udcs="http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/soap" xmlns:udcxf="http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/xmlfile" xmlns:udcp2p="http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/parttopart" xmlns:wf="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/workflow/" xmlns:dsss="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/digsig-setup" xmlns:dssi="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/digsig" xmlns:mdssi="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/digital-signature" xmlns:mver="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns:mrels="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/ relationships" xmlns:spwp="http://microsoft.com/sharepoint/webpartpages" xmlns:ex12t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" xmlns:ex12m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" xmlns:pptsl="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/SlideLibrary/" xmlns:spsl="http://microsoft.com/webservices/SharePointPortalServer/PublishedLinksService" xmlns:Z="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:" xmlns:st="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

Forgot to answer the first question: Excel spreadsheet.

 

From: Mark Graybill [mailto:mark <at> graybill.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:26 PM
To: 'scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com'
Subject: RE: [scrumdevelopment] Poll: Hours or Story Points?

 

Story points. By the mere fact of known sprint size and their X axis markers, the time factor is  not lost.  

 

We should want a focus on efforts without the distraction and biasing of time constructs.  People are drawn to using time for the same reasons we are drawn to exhibit a habit.  Given our industry’s poor record of forecasting, we should pause enough to understand the significance of this.

 

To a biopsychologist (neuroscientist) this is obvious; but not to developers.

 

It is also similar to earned value (inversely).  Story points has become popular, but coming from old school of earned value, I’d have preferred using terms with meaning conn ected to earned value.

 

To be honest, I don’t like the terminology of Scrum and all the other eccentricities of the method – especially the Scrum handshake.  You can also have the barnyard animal names.  But there is a point to all that: poignancy, and to jumpstart a completely new paradigm – one that is worth our attention beyond all others, IMO.

 

Though I started an opponent, my investigation compelled me to advocacy.

 

 

From: scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com [mailto:scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Rafael Nascimento
Se nt: Thursday, March 31, 2011 10:25 PM
To: scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com
Subject: [scrumdevelopment] Poll: Hours or Story Points?

 

 


Hi guys!

Just a small poll:

1. How do you generate your sprint burndown charts? Considering hours or story points?
2. Why?

Cheers!
Rafael Nascimento



__._,_.___


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Adam Sroka | 1 Apr 2011 06:47
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Re: Poll: Hours or Story Points?


On Mar 31, 2011 8:38 PM, "Rafael Nascimento" <rafaelnascimento.rj <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>
> Hi guys!
>
> Just a small poll:
>
> 1. How do you generate your sprint burndown charts? Considering hours or story points?

I prefer to burn up stories. I just count the stories completed. This is equivalent to story points if you average out the story sizes and call that a 'one'.

> 2. Why?
>

It simplifies things and it works out just as well as long as the story sizes are all small (which is something I aim for anyway.)

IIRC, Ron Jeffries was the first to recommend this approach (but he also invented story points ;-)



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scrumnl | 1 Apr 2011 08:28
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Re: User Story Maturity

What my worries a bit are with such ratings of a practice is that people want to get the highest score, as in the
more points we have the better we are doing.

Let's say they don't have a PO 100% allocated, but still are doing perfectly fine with the interaction with
this person. Your test would tell them that that is 'wrong'.

I don't believe that there is a single way of telling how people should do Scrum, whether they should do users
stories and if they do user stories how to do them.

I'm afraid your test, or any other test with scoring, will radiate the message that there is 'A Single Way To
Do Things'. People over process.

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Peter Stevens (calendar | 1 Apr 2011 08:29
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Re: Poll: Hours or Story Points?

Hi Rafael

1.) Count of Tasks
2) Much lower overhead. A task is timeboxed to one day or less. Each task represents 'the goal for the day' (or perhaps something as small as a reminder to do something important). This does away with the estimating and re-estimating. The goal of the Story Point burn down can be achieved by limiting the number of PBI's in Progress simultaneously. My favorite is 1 PBI for every 2 team members. This forces pairing and encourages focus on getting open PBI's done, rather than taking on one new work

Cheers,

Peter

On 4/1/11 5:25 AM, Rafael Nascimento wrote:
 


Hi guys!

Just a small poll:

1. How do you generate your sprint burndown charts? Considering hours or story points?
2. Why?

Cheers!
Rafael Nascimento




__._,_.___

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Peter Stevens (calendar | 1 Apr 2011 08:56
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Re: Re: User Story Maturity

Hi Charles,

I tend to agree with Maurice that an assessment which focuses on a score can lead people to a) game the system or b) focus on someone else's "best practice" without really thinking about their own problems.

Have you looked at Henrik Kniberg's Scrum Checklist? A total of some 40 questions, grouped and prioritized.  You answer each with yes or no. I've found it useful as a self-assessment - the questions are more talking points than a number you want to achieve.

Cheers,
Peter


On 4/1/11 8:28 AM, scrumnl wrote:
 

What my worries a bit are with such ratings of a practice is that people want to get the highest score, as in the more points we have the better we are doing.

Let's say they don't have a PO 100% allocated, but still are doing perfectly fine with the interaction with this person. Your test would tell them that that is 'wrong'.

I don't believe that there is a single way of telling how people should do Scrum, whether they should do users stories and if they do user stories how to do them.

I'm afraid your test, or any other test with scoring, will radiate the message that there is 'A Single Way To Do Things'. People over process.




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kbs_kulbhushan | 1 Apr 2011 09:12
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Re: Poll: Hours or Story Points?


1.  Hours.
2.  Because we still have not been able to size the  stories small
enough and so the information with hours is more indicative of progress.

Regards,

PS: Peter's suggestion of Tasks seems useful in our scenario. I will try
this from Monday's sprint.

--- In scrumdevelopment <at> yahoogroups.com, Rafael Nascimento
<rafaelnascimento.rj <at> ...> wrote:
>
> Hi guys!
>
> Just a small poll:
>
> 1. How do you generate your sprint burndown charts? Considering hours
or
> story points?
> 2. Why?
>
> Cheers!
> Rafael Nascimento
>

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