A Great Way to Create Agile User Stories
INVEST is an acronym that helps us when creating user stories. In an Agile team, you’ll typically get together in a “Triad” or “The Three Amigos” of the Customer, Developer and Tester, but it can be anyone who needs to have an input.
INVEST stands for:
Independent, Negotiable, Valuable (or Vertical), Estimable, Small and Testable.
Independent
The User Story should be a usable piece that can operate on its own, independent to others, that we can demonstrate at the end of the Sprint.
Negotiable
The User Story should be able to be negotiated in our out of the sprint, or even out of the Product Backlog if it is no longer valuable. We should be able to negotiate the requirements against the solution.
Valuable
The item should have customer value, and be able to be demonstrated.
Estimable
The item’s effort should be able to be estimated by the team.
Small
It should be small enough to be completed in a Sprint (usually around 2 weeks)
Testable
It should be testable – often the team will write the tests (or acceptance criteria) first using “Test Driven Development”.
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