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| * Richard Lawrence's [[http://www.richardlawrence.info/2009/10/28/patterns-for-splitting-user-stories/|Patterns for Splitting User Stories]] |
It's arguable whether or not User Stories is the best name for this concept, but it's a little late to worry about that. My advice is to not worry too much about the precision of what is a user story, but concentrate on the spirit.
A user story makes a difference to a user of the system.
It does something a user wants (or avoids something the user doesn't want).
"Have my data available when I log into the system tomorrow" is a user story. "Write the data to the database" is not; it's a technical task.
"Don't crash when the zip code field is left blank" is a user story. "Validate input" is not.
A user story is functional
It slices through the system, involving all the layers and subsystems as needed.
Splitting stories
William Wake's Twenty Ways to Split Stories (now available in PDF summary)
Lasse Koskela's Ways to split user stories which refers to J.B. Rainsberger's Splitting stories: an example
James Grenning's Story Weight Reduction Toolkit
Richard Lawrence's Patterns for Splitting User Stories