Agile Requirements Exploration

Organizers: Dave Nicolette, Brett Schuchert

Objectives:
To give participants a feeling for writing user stories and acceptance tests for those stories.
Contents:

•   Introduction
•   Iterative story writing exercises, with participants working in teams of 4 to 6
•   Iterative user acceptance test writing exercises
•   Mini-project (house of cards, paper airplanes, etc.)
•   Retrospective and wrap-up

Process & Timetable:
Introduction: 5 min.
User stories, iteration 1: 10 min.
User stories, iteration 2: 10 min.
User stories, iteration 3: 10 min.
Acceptance test intro: 5 min.
Acceptance tests, iteration 1: 10 min.
Acceptance tests, iteration 2: 10 min.
Acceptance tests, iteration 3: 10 min.
Mini-project intro: 5 min.
Mini-project, iteration 1: 10 min.
Mini-project, iteration 2: 10 min.
Mini-project, iteration 3: 10 min.
Retrospective and wrap-up: 15 min.
Session Format:
Hands-on workshop with participants divided into teams of 4 to 6 people each. The workshop is designed to exploit the benefits of "experiential learning."

For more details about the structure, content, and flow of the workshop, please see Agile Requirements Exploration Workshop.

For more information about experiential learning, please see Experiential Learning.
Intended Audience:
Anyone interested in learning about user stories and user acceptance tests as tools for exploring requirements iteratively on an agile project. There is no programming in this workshop, and participants may include developers, analysts, managers, and business customers of agile projects.

Benefits of participating:
We would like participants to gain a sense of the feel and flow of requirements exploration in the agile way, including the appropriate size and content of user stories, user acceptance tests, and iterative refinement of a team's understanding of the requirements.

   What is "Done"
   Teams are more adaptable to change if they work on fewer things at the same time and get them done
   Requirements discovery
   What it really means to work in iterations
   What is success?
         o Customer satisfied
   Too many UATs? Story too big
   Too few? Don't understand problem.
Benefits of organizing:
   Help others transition their thinking about requirements from the traditional BDUF approach to the iterative agile approach
   Get feedback about how requirements are elaborated in participants' organizations and how they see an agile approach to requirements working in their environment
   Improve our skills in applying experiential learning techniques in workshops and classes
   * Make new friends