Vladimir Tarasow and Andris Bariss presented on avoiding misunderstandings with product vision, requirements, user stories, and minimum marketable features. They emphasized the importance of clear and shared understanding, and provided questions to ensure each element is well-defined, achievable, and meets stakeholder needs. Real-life examples showed how unclear requirements can harm projects.

1. Andris Bariss
Vladimir Tarasow
Broken Vision Broke the Knees
User Stories

2. Vladimir Tarasow
About: http://about.me/netrat
E-mail: netrat@netrat.eu
Andris Bariss
About: lv.linkedin.com/in/andrisbariss
E-mail: andris.bariss@gmail.com

3. Often this picture is used to illustrate the drawbacks of Waterfall,
however the same causes can affect Agile projects, too.

5. Kept on crawling
in project with wrong or unclear Vision
and requirements can harm you badly.

6. Real life example:
● 2 people hospitalized
● 2 people had serious health issues

7. "The problem with user
requirement capture is
that someone assumes
there's a requirement."
Dave Snowden

8. Eliminate uncertainty
with communication.
Learn from your
mistakes and victories.
Know the basics.

9. "Every book ever printed in
every language all available
in 60 seconds from
anywhere on the planet."

10. Product Vision
Describes why the project is undertaken.
Describes what the desired end-state is.
Shared by the Stakeholders, the Product
Owners, the Team and the end users.

11. How to avoid misunderstandings?
Is it short, clear and focused?
Is it compelling?
Is it achievable?
Does it describe how the product or its
main feature meet the customer needs?
Is it aligned with goals of all Stakeholders?
Is it inspiring so that everybody involved
strives for the same goal?

12. There is the need to make
the product UI more
intuitive. There are too
many support requests
related to usage of the tool,
often associated with very
“simple” problems.

13. Requirement
Represents a need.
Must answer the questions What? and Why?
Tries to identify with a clear sentence
what is the problem to solve.

14. How to avoid misunderstandings?
Simple: Can everybody understand this?
Measurable: When is the Requirement
fulfilled?
Achievable: Do you have the resources?
Relevant: Is it really a need for the
customer?
Traceable: Who is the stakeholder or
origin?
Simple: Can everybody understand this?
Measurable: When is the Requirement
fulfilled?
Achievable: Do you have the resources?
Relevant: Is it really a need for the
customer?
Traceable: Who is the stakeholder or
origin?

15. As a provider search user,
I need the ability to search
for providers by specialty
so that I can more efficiently
refer patients to specialists.

16. User Story
Represent a description of a “solution” —
from a functional point of view.
Be a single sentence in the form:
As a <type of user> I want <some
capabilities> so that <business value>
Must contain also Acceptance Criteria that
describes how the user of the story would
accept the implemented functionality.

17. How to avoid misunderstandings?
Don't put too much information into
description.
Acceptance criteria must be informative.
Don't confuse acceptance criteria and test
cases.
Should be written in mere human
language.

18. Sample User Story
Title: Search for providers by provider specialty.
Description: As a provider search user, I need the
ability to search for providers by specialty so that I
can more efficiently refer patients to specialists.
Acceptance criteria: The provider search mechanism
has the ability to enter a specialty. The specialty
search will have a list of provider specialties from
which to select. If there are more results than can fit
on one page, the system will provide the capability to
view the list in pages or sections.

19. Minimum Marketable Feature
Represents a distinct and deliverable
feature of the system.
Provides significant value to the customer.
Consists of one or more user stories.

20. How to avoid misunderstandings?
Simplify planning by eliminating technical
dependencies.
Create a release plan that deploys high-
value features first.
Group functionality into minimum
packages that can be released individually.

21. How they all
fit together?

25. Thank You!
Please, leave feedback!
http://spkr8.com/t/23061

26. Materials used in the presentation:
● The Project Cartoon (http://www.projectcartoon.com/)
● Photo by Derrick Tyson
● Photo by Expert Infantry
● Photo by Sgt. Sean Mathis
● Amazon Kindle's vision statement
● 'New to User Stories?' by William F. Nazzaro and Charles Suscheck
● 'Minimum Marketable Feature' from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
● 'Minimum viable product' from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
● 'Phased Releases' by James Shore
● Illustrations by Vladimir Tarasow
Credits

27. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.