INVEST

Have you ever heard the acronym "INVEST"?

The INVEST mnemonic was created by Bill Wake and it is introduced in The Agile Samurai(@jrasmusson 2010) .

"INVEST" is as a reminder of the characteristics of a good quality user story,

  • Indipendent
    • The user story should be self-contained, in a way that there is no inherent dependency on another user story.
  • Negotiable
    • User stories, up until they are part of an iteration, can always be changed and rewritten.
  • Valuable
    • A user story must deliver value to the end user.
  • Estimable
    • You must always be able to estimate the size of a user story.
  • Small
    • User stories should not be so big as to become impossible to plan/task/prioritize with a certain level of certainty.
  • Testable
    • The user story or its related description must provide the necessary information to make test development possible.

quated from wikipedia)

"Valuable" is easy understand Of these six words, So everyone will care But Testable,Small and Estimable are often forgotten.

If you noticed follow problems, It may be able to solve it by being conscious of INVEST.

  • Story goal is difficult to understand, Because acceptance criteria is not clear.
  • Story is hard to estimate, Because the size is huge.

INVEST User Story

Then I think about an example about the user story that is INVEST.

As a Administrator,
I want search user by name
So that I don't use time for find user in list.
  • Indipendent
    • OK. This story is inipendent feature.
  • Negotiable
    • OK. This story is not specified implementation.
  • Valuable
    • OK. To improve Administrator's work efficiency
  • Estimable
    • OK. It story may be modified 1 view (and 1 logic)
  • Small
    • OK. It is simple and small.
  • Testable
    • OK. Story is simple, (please confirm the acceptance criteria properly in PO.)

It is INVEST and good user story.

As a ramen JIRO lovers (sometimes called Jirolian),
I want to know which JIRO is open now
So I wants to go to Jiro as soon as I thought.

And this user story is INVEST too.

Conclusion

INVEST is good practice for writing user story.

How about if you try a Story-Gathering workshop while being conscious of INVEST?