A template to help you write good User Stories

As a Product owner, I found useful to have a user story template with a correct format. That has allowed me to save time and focus on the content.

Here is a user story template I made and that might help you to write short, simple and specific user stories.

Let’s look further to this template for an explanation.

Title :

For a better organization I suggest to start the story title by its nomenclature and number. Then the project to which it belongs and ending by its description, using conditional tense like “should”, “could”,…

Exemple : US 01_Log in_User should be able to log in

As a… — I want… — So that… :

Typical users stories started with a sentence to define precisely and shortly the feature’s target, goal and benefit.

-As a [User type, Business type, Persona] : Who? Define the user.

-I Want [Objectives, Actions, Tasks] : What? Define the actions the user will accomplish.

-So that…[Benefit, Result, Value] : Why? Define the benefits for the user.

Exemple : As a subscriber, I want to log in so that I could access to my account

Acceptance criteria :

Acceptance criteria complete stories and make it testable.

The “Given — When — Then” formula is a way to write a scenarios for specific acceptance tests.

-Given : Creates a context

-When : Some actions to be carried out by the user

-Then : The result that should be obtained

Exemple :

AC_01 : Given that I’m a user with an active account, when I’m login on the website with my correct email address and password, then I should be logged in without any error

AC_02 : Given that I’m a user with an active account, when I log in on the website with a wrong email address, then I should see an error message displayed under the email field

User stories are a time-saving tool, that prevent misunderstanding between team members and keep a history of the product.