Customer Obsessed Story Writing

To truly delight customers or users, a team must develop a profound understanding of their problems, needs, and desires. This understanding should then be translated into a set of user stories that reflect solutions for these.

The ideal approach begins with crafting customer problem statements, from which the team can create user stories written from the customer's perspective. Each story should deliver a focused benefit rather than being a mere functional breakdown of work.

Following the INVEST criteria for stories, the "V" stands for valuable. This implies that the story should not only articulate the feature being built but also the associated benefits and the intended beneficiary.

A commonly used format is "As a (user), I need (feature), so that I can (benefit)," but any clear format that conveys the key elements to the team is acceptable.

It is essential to recognize that the customer may not always be an end-user of the product or service. A team's customer could be internal, such as an internal support or operations team that requires a feature to effectively sell or support the product.

Maintaining this perspective broadens the team's customer-centric approach.