User Story Template

Myth: User Stories have to be written in the form "As a ... I want ... so that ...!"
Variations:

• Team members need to learn how to evaluate what a "good user story" is and give the PO feedback "how to write better stories".

Follow-up myths:

• Story-Writing workshop

Category: Backlog myths
Danger: Low

The basis of the myth

The Connextra Template was created by a team from the company Connextra in 2001 to get more clarity of purpose, need and audience in their development process. It was simple and effective, so it caught on.

Why is it a myth?

Well ... as User Stories are not part of Scrum, neither is a prescriptive format for them.
But there are a few more misunderstandings behind it:

Misunderstanding #1: Need to identify the customer
The "as a ..." portion is only relevant when the customer is unknown. When we know that Marc, our sysadmin, requested something, why should I write "As a sysadmin I want to ..."? We know Marc, he's in daily communication with us and he knows he wanted this stuff. Especially when it's a stuff like "modify user account", we already know whom it's for. Only when it's vague or unclear, do we need to write who our customer is.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't invest time finding out who the customer is. But don't waste time to state the bleeding obvious.

Misunderstanding #2: Need to identify the request

The "I want ..." portion, too, is only relevant when the need is unknown. When everyone on the team knows we got a freaking memory leak, why should we write "I want a stable memory utilization" or whatever - why not just go with "Fix memory leak"?

Misunderstanding #3: Need to identify the objective What else can you do wrong except also restating the bleeding obvious when the objective is clear to everyone? "Lost emails" should be telling. Why waste time stating "so that I can read the information that was sent to me by mail"?
The Connextra template is a great tool to remove uncertainty by asking systematic questions. It can be really useful during Refinement to bring clarity into the Unknown. But it's quite pointless where transparency exists.

Consequences

Applying the Connextra template brute-force is a good way to train your team in asking the right questions.
The template helps when the team exhibits a tendency of implementing features that nobody uses, either because they don't help anyone or because they don't do what they should.

But after a while, this turns into tiresome routine and the value of doing this is lost in the mist.

Remedies

Relieve your Product Owner from filling in boring templates.

Abolish any kind of "user story template" you might have.

Use the Connextra Template as a Thinking tool. During Refinement, ask developers if they know who wants what, why.