The Mountain Goat Software Blog

I take questions at the end of every Better User Stories webinar. I've done enough of these sessions that I can almost predict which user story questions are going to pop up in the chat!
I thought it might be helpful to answer three of the most commonly asked questions about user stories all in one place. Feel free to share it with your teams and stakeholders, to help get everyone on the same page about user stories....

While it's true that agile teams value "responding to change over following a plan," high-performing agile teams do make plans. In fact, agile planning is built into the Scrum framework, from daily scrums to sprint planning. The reason? Because good...

I’m the first to say that established agile teams sometimes find approaches that work for them outside the rules of Scrum. But I also believe there is value to be found in teams thinking and working inside the Scrum "box".
Why? Because frameworks (e.g., Scrum) enhance creativity. Want proof? The video below uses William Shakespeare, the TV show Friends, and the Wile E. Coyote cartoons as examples of how frameworks boost creativity. I’ve included the text as well if you...

I hear from a lot of teams that they struggle to estimate well: “We’re really bad at estimating,” they say. They know the reasons to estimate product backlog items, so they want to get better.
Too often, though, these teams will attempt to improve by trying harder. They don’t identify problems in their approach and systematically fix them, they just try harder....