Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

The “So That” Clause

In some of the earliest examples of user stories, the “role” and the “goal” were the only parts of a typical user story. After many years of helping teams with writing stories, Leslie and I have found that including the “so that” clause as part of the story definition (which focuses on the actual business value wanted by stakeholders) is invaluable. Ensuring teams include a so that clause as part of every user story in turn ensures that the teams understand why a customer wants some feature. It’s one thing to understand that a customer wants some feature, and even to know exactly what that feature is, but it’s a whole different ballgame when teams understand why a customer wants some feature and how, specifically, that feature ...