
User Stories and Tasks – Part 5
Story Tracking
The stories are moved to a state of ‘In Progress’ on the Scrum board, and every day, during the stand-up meeting, individuals should give an update of how much still needs to be done for the tasks that they are responsible for to be completed. This gives the Scrum Master the opportunity to remove any impediments, and to make sure that the team is able to deliver everything that they agreed to deliver at the planning stage.
There will be occasions when unforeseen issues arise, and in these situations, the Scrum Master, together with the rest of the team, will need to make a decision on whether the story needs to be resized, and either moved to the next iteration or potentially split into smaller chunks. Ultimately, over multiple cycles, this tracking of stories will allow the Scrum Master and Product Owner to understand the velocity of the team and to learn what areas to focus on in order to improve productivity.
Creating User Stories For Product Owners
The user story is a core part of Agile Software Development. Where other methods of software development have functional requirements and technical specifications, Agile has user stories. These user stories serve to explain what the product should be able to do, without specifying details. This gives the team freedom to do things in a way that is efficient and practical while ensuring that stakeholders get the product that they want.
User stories usually consist of one or two sentences explaining who it is for, the desired behavior and the reason for the requirement. The typical form is: “As a [role], I can [feature] so that [reason].” By following this form when writing user stories, the team can cover the who, what, and why about a feature. Writing good user stories helps to ensure that the team creates valuable features for the product.
But who is responsible for writing user stories? The Product Owner is in charge of prioritizing and accepting user stories, but anyone on the team can write stories. If other team members write a user story, the Product Owner can accept or reject them before they are incorporated into the product backlog. If the Product Owner allows bad user stories into the backlog, it wastes time for the team because they do not contribute value to the product. Instead, the Product Owner should only allow user stories into the backlog that are independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable.
59 Seconds Training Video
Master of Agile – Agile Scrum Tester With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)
Introductory Offer: Free Course
Master of Agile – Agile Scrum Tester With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)
What is this course?
This ‘Master of Agile – Agile Scrum Tester With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)’ provides an in-depth understanding of the Agile Scrum Tester roles and responsibilities
You will explore the Agile Scrum project life-cycle, including how an Agile User Story is created, to how we know when it is ‘done’
This course is aimed at those with or without prior knowledge and experience of the Agile values and principles
During this course you will learn the tools needed to succeed as an Agile Scrum Tester
What will you learn?
You will gain an in-depth understanding of the Agile Scrum Tester roles and responsibilities, and you will be able to
- Fully understand the role of the Agile Scrum Tester
- Understand the roles involved in an Agile project
- Create an effective Product Backlog
- Effectively participate in Scrum Meetings such as the Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review and Retrospective
- Identify the roles involves in the Scrum Team
- Fully understand the role of the Agile Scrum Developer
- Understand the roles involved in an Agile project
- Create an effective Product Backlog
- Effectively participate in Scrum Meetings such as the Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review and Retrospective
- Identify the roles involves in the Scrum Team

What topics are covered within this course
You will cover the following topics during this course:
- An Introduction to Agile Project Management (Tester)
- The 12 Agile Principles (Tester)
- Introduction to Scrum (Tester)
- Scrum Projects (Tester)
- Scrum Project Roles (Tester)
- Quality in Agile (Tester)
- Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog (Tester)
- Quality Management in Scrum (Tester)
- Epics and Personas (Tester)
- Planning in Scrum (Tester)
- Scrum Boards (Tester)
- User Stories (Tester)
- The Daily Scrum (Tester)
- The Product Backlog (Tester)
- Review and Retrospective (Tester)
- Validating a Sprint (Tester)
Our Book Recommendations
We found these books great for finding out more information on Agile Scrum: