tP week 5: Gather requirements

Learn the recipe for brainstorming user stories in the textbook → Specifying Requirements → UserStories → Usage.
Also learn about brainstorming and user stories.

Follow the steps in the recipe mentioned above to arrive at user stories for the the product, with your team members.

User stories for what version? At this stage, collect user stories to cover at least the final version you hope to deliver at the end of the semester. It is OK to go even beyond that (reason: we are simulating a project that will continue even after the semester is over).

How many user stories? Aim to collect more user stories than you can deliver in the project. Aim to create at least 30 user stories. Include all 'obvious' ones you can think of but also look for 'non obvious' ones that you think are likely to be missed by other competing products.

User stories of what size? Normally, it is fine to use epic-level user stories in the early stages of a project but given this is a small project, you may want to define smaller user stories (i.e., small enough for one person to implement in 1-2 days).

• Bad As a user, I can track my schedule, so that I can know when to do things.
  Reason: too big, as track can involve a lot of things.
• Good As a user, I can add a time to a task, so that I can record when a task need to be done.
• Good As a user, I can see the pending task that has the next earliest deadline, so that I can know what I need to do next.

What format?: You may use a sentence format or a table format but do maintain the prescribed three-part structure of a user story. In particular, try to include the benefit part in most user stories as that will come in handy when prioritizing user stories later.

How to record?
Keep records of intermediate steps (e.g., persona, scenarios) in your collaborative project document started in the previous week.
You can write each user story in a piece of paper (e.g. yellow sticky note, index card, or just pieces of paper about the size of a playing card). Alternatively you can use an online tool (some examples given in [Textbook Specifying Requirements → UserStories → Usage → (panel) Tool Examples ]).