USER STORY as Agile Practice

Dear readers, first I would like to apologize because my English writing is not really good. I am not an English native, however I am trying my best to improve my skills. I hope you understand that.
Regarding agile practice, it is common this question: Why use a technique such as User Story?
Using this technique assists in identifying a logical business requirement, allows breaking requirements in small pieces of requirements and also allows structuring these many requirements on a type of tree that will be a baseline for documentation.
USER STORY is a technique for identifying and organizing business requirements using stories told by users as they describe themselves their needs. User Stories are artifacts developed and managed by agile practices.
Using User Stories not necessarily there is a need of interaction between actors and a system or software tool, once this interaction can put focus on the activities of the process.
3C Concept (Card, Conversation and Confirmation)
Ron Jeffries (2001) highlights three important aspects of the user stories named as Card, Conversation and Confirmation. While the card contains a description of the story, the details are worked out during the conversation and remembered during the confirmation.
Card
User stories are traditionally written on a card. The card does not contain all the information about the requirement instead it has just enough text to identify the need and to remember what should be implemented. Notes, estimates, observations, comments, priority and cost, among others information can be written on it latter.
Story cards are reminders to have a conversation instead a detailed requirement. They don’t need to include all the relevant details. However at that time on the story is written only some important known details.
The user story card objective is to represent the requirements of the client, rather than document them. While the card has the story, the details are worked into the conversation and it is recorded one or more confirmation.
Dan North (2006), in an attempt to define a single language for requirements analysis, developed a model for the user story which is defined by who, what and why a feature should be built and not how to build it.
Where "what" is the system's functionality, the "why" is the benefit or amount of functionality for business, and "who" is the person (or role) that will benefit by the functionality.
The advantage of this mode is to force identifying the value of the story for the product and for the business. It helps identifying stories that will not add value to the business and making it easy to get them out of scope.
Conversation
In a conversation, details can arise during communication of customer requirement to the development team. These details will clarify the purpose of the story.
Confirmation
The customer defines with the development team when the user story can be considered ready. It is the definition of DONE. Here are the criteria for acceptance confirming that the user story is behaving according to the requirements. Details have already been determined through conversations become acceptance testing.
Example
Below is a simple template for an User Story to be written on the card:
As a <type of user>, I want <some goal>, so that <some reason>.
As a Flat Tenant, I want to pay my rent using my personal credit card, so that I may have more flexibility to pay my rent in months I have little money.
Acceptance Criteria
  • Accept payment by Master Card
  • Accept payment by Visa Card
  • Ask for password before complete the transaction
Andre de Godoy Nunes

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