Scrum User Stories

The entries in the Scrum Product Backlog are often written in the form of User Stories. A User Story tells a short story about the requirements of someone while he or she is using the software product we are building.

It has a name, a brief narrative, and acceptance criteria for the story to be counted as completed. The advantage of user stories is that they precisely focus on what the user needs and wants without going into the details on how to achieve them. How to achieve them will be the job of the Scrum team at a later stage,

There are different recommendations on how to define User stories. A well known and reliable template is:

As an [actor], I [want|must] [action] so that [achievement]

Or in a shorter version:

As an [actor], I [want|must] [achievement]

The Actor is the owner of the user story. That is often a user, but it is advisable to be more specific. By using particular actors such as an administrator, logged in customer, or unauthenticated visitor or so on, user stories become distinctive. So they set requirements into a proper context everyone can understand.

The Action is what the Actor wants to do. If it is a mandatory requirement, it can be prefixed as must. Otherwise, it's prefixed as want.

The Achievement is what the Actor wants to

achieve by performing the Action. That's the Actor's envisioned business result or a functional technical component that emerges once the Action is completed.