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As a product manager I often have to get a lot of information out of a lot of people in a way that I can understand, categorise, and do something with. The problem is, most people aren’t great communicators. Especially if they’re busy. Especially if what they’re talking about isn’t their area of expertise. And especially if what they’re talking about is a new idea that only exists in their head. This is what user stories are for.

Why use user stories?

If you’re creating something, it's a good idea to get feedback. General feedback can be good, feedback from the people you’re creating the thing for, is great. Most of the time if you’re building something for a ‘user’ (sometimes called an ‘audience’). More specifically, a ‘user’ of a ‘thing’. And if you’re building a ‘thing’ for a ‘user’ then you want it to serve a ‘purpose’. And you want it to be great at its ‘purpose’. 

So, when you’re creating the thing it stands to reason that you should reach out to as many potential users as you can. People who might be interested in its purpose, and get their feedback. Then, once you’ve created a thing, if you want to improve it, you should ask the users about how well the thing fulfils the purpose and get their feedback. 

This is a lot harder than it sounds. People are complicated and communication is hard. If you ask a room full of people what their favourite film is, you’d get a lot of different answers. If you then collected all the people who said the same thing and asked them why, you would likely get different answers again. If you then collected the ones who had the same reasons and asked them why that reason is good, you would likely get different answers again. And so on. People have divergent opinions. 

If at each stage of asking them about their favourite film you asked them to properly articulate their opinions and create a reasoned, defensible argument for it, a lot of people would struggle. If you asked them to do that during a busy day, on a laptop, in as few words as possible, about a film they’ve seen once and didn’t think it was that interesting anyway … I think anyone would struggle. Abstract thought is hard at the best of times. 

But if the creation of a ‘thing’ for a ‘user’ with a ‘purpose’ necessitates feedback, how do you get that in an effective way? You could go and spend hours with everyone you can asking questions, clarifying assumptions, and probing into their minds. And if you have the time for that, heck yes, do it. But, if we assume you don’t, then this is where user stories come in. 

What is a user story?

A user story is a tool for communicating about ideas. I don’t really like the term ‘user story’ personally. It’s not really a story, but I haven’t got a better alternative so here we are. I structure user stories like this: 

‘As a [X], I want [Y], so that [Z].’

It’s a simple sentence structure that captures the user, the thing, and the purpose within in an opinion. You can categorise by X, Y, or Z, and you can read it quickly. If you have a thousand user stories like this you could get through them pretty quickly, group them however you like, and extract the most common or useful stuff. Then, assuming you know who wrote it, go and talk to them. 

User stories help the people creating a ‘thing’ stay focused on the ‘user’. They keep teams focused on solving the users problems. Once the feedback is given in this way you can give it to anyone, the people who are doing the creating, or the people who are doing the convincing, and they’ll get it. With these three things defined, teams can work together to decide how best to serve the user and meet their goals.

Conclusion

User stories are a simple and effective way for people who are busy to communicate ideas in a way that tries to filter out bias and distractions. If you can get the user focused on the problem and what they would like to happen, you can focus on the solution. If you can get a team focused on the solution in relation to the problem the users really have, you can build something actually useful. User stories are a good tool for achieving this. Use them well. 

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