This post originally appeared on the PivotalTracker blog. Ever get the feeling that your team is working on more than what’s actually in their backlog? Even with the best-laid plans, there…

One of the most common questions new Scrum teams face is how to handle stories that were not completed in one Sprint and must be rolled into the next Sprint….

Estimation is tough. We all know it and we all struggle with it. Most of the challenge of estimation is due both to the abstract the nature of software as…

I recently received a great question from a viewer of my Creating Effective User Stories course. The viewer asked how she should approach writing user stories for team who would…

This post originally appeared on the PivotalTracker blog. If you’re a product manager, user stories are a critical part of how you interact with your team. Nothing trumps a face-to-face conversation,…

It should come as no surprise that the smaller the pieces your team can break their work into, the better chance they’ll have at succeeding at that work. After all,…

User Stories are a great way to translate your users’ needs into real tasks that your team can work with. They’re succinct, lightweight, and flexible. But what if you could…

Many teams struggle with getting the right level of detail in their backlog. If the backlog is too vaguely defined, then the team picks up stories that aren’t immediately actionable…

If you’re like most Product Owners, you probably have a backlog full of user stories modeling just what you’d like to see your best users do with your product.

But what about your “not so great” users. Not just those who are casual users of your product, or approach it with the lackluster enthusiasm. No, I’m talking about those malevolent users who have set out to do you harm. You have those users, too…you just may not be thinking about them.

These are the users who have only dubious intent towards your company, your product, or even your other users. We call these users our “Evil Users”, and whether you want to think of them or not…they’re your users, too. And they deserve they’re own user stories.

We often talk about our “customer”, they’re at the center of everything we do. But we rarely talk about who our “customer” may actually be. Often, we just assume that…