User Stories and Use Cases Should be Combined in Agile Requirements Gathering, says ESI International

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ESI International, the world's leading project management training company, today announced the release of a new paper titled, “Developing Effective Agile Requirements Relies on Both User Stories and Use Cases.” ESI’s continued focus is on meeting the needs of agile practitioners worldwide, and the paper outlines how to leverage use cases with user stories to develop effective Agile requirements.

“We believe that this is short sighted, however. With an end goal of identifying needs and translating them into requirements, we believe that both techniques can be used to get to the best business solution.”

With a goal of providing knowledge and techniques to those who are tasked with gathering project requirements—the key building blocks of successful projects—the paper describes how to utilize use cases within an Agile project and defines clear opportunities to use both elicitation methods to gather the best requirements possible. Most often used in Waterfall projects, use cases are diagrams that demonstrate the actors and their goals. Classically used within Agile projects, user stories are short scenarios that the business user/stakeholder “tells” to concentrate on features that users value and interact with directly.

“Many shy away from utilizing use cases toward gathering requirements within an Agile project because the term ‘use cases’ is associated with the Waterfall methodology,” said Nancy Y. Nee, ESI VP of Global Product Strategy. “We believe that this is short sighted, however. With an end goal of identifying needs and translating them into requirements, we believe that both techniques can be used to get to the best business solution.”

“As companies evaluate Agile methods and begin to take steps toward managing projects in an Agile fashion, we believe that best practices can be found by utilizing pieces of the Waterfall methodology combined with Agile principles, particularly as they relate to requirements gathering,” said Nee. “While there are no prescribed guidelines on when to employ use cases or user stories, Agile practitioners would be wise to assess the benefits of each to ensure that product backlog—the list of requirements—is prioritized appropriately and that customer needs are clearly understood and met.”

Click to download Developing Effective Agile Requirements Relies on Both User Stories and Use Cases.

The release of the paper coincides with the scheduling of ESI’s eight course Agile Practitioner curriculum. You can find information about our Agile Practitioner curriculum here.

About ESI International

ESI, a subsidiary of Informa plc (LSE:INF), is a global project-focused training company, helping people around the world improve the way they manage projects, contracts, requirements and vendors through innovative training in project management, business analysis and contract management. In addition to ESI’s more than 100 courses delivered in more than a dozen languages at hundreds of locations worldwide, ESI offers several certificate programs through our educational partner, The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1981, ESI’s worldwide headquarters are in Arlington, Va., USA. To date, ESI’s programs have benefited more than 1.35 million professionals worldwide. For more information visit www.esi-intl.com.