How to write bad user stories and blame your team

Writing good a user story is important, many problems relay on bad story writing.

But instead of the classical set of good example let's see some bad examples: "how to NOT do".

Let's think out of the box, let's try to find all the way to write terrible user stories.

Here some of them that come out of my mind:

  • Imperative: "do that!", please don't.

  • Too short, the PO thinks just a short title is enough

  • Wrong persona: as PO I want..., as user I want... Who is a user? In which conditions? I.e. As a customer on the train I want to buy articles....

  • Missing acceptance criterias. A story should be testable do you remember?

  • Too long, usually when a story is too long it means it's so complicated and/or it's unclear and not ready

  • A task instead of a story. The PO should tell "what" the stackholders want, the team is responsible for "how".

  • Direct assignment. A story should not assigned to a specific developer, the team should be able to self organize.

  • Forget to review the story or think you don't need to review it at all


Do you have any anti-good examples? Send me and I will add to the list.