How to derive user stories?

User stories are brief, user-centric statements that describe a user’s desires and goals. Often used in Agile development, they capture the what — what the user wants to accomplish with the system. User stories focus on the user and their needs, while use cases concentrate on the system and its functionalities. Use user stories when: User needs are the top priority. You need to gather requirements iteratively. User involvement is crucial in the development process. User stories can capture high-level requirements, and use cases can then break those down into specifics. Typically, product managers write user stories.

To derive user stories, an epic is a large requirement that is too big to be captured in a single user story. It consists of multiple user stories that can be broken down into smaller, actionable items. For example, let’s look at an epic: Epic: “User Account Management” To complete this epic, several user stories would be needed. Each user story is derived from the epic and represents a small, actionable unit. The relationship between epics and user stories is hierarchical. The epic represents the big picture, and user stories break that down into more specific, actionable tasks. User stories play a crucial role in backlog management, especially when epics are broken down into smaller user stories to be worked on step by step. By effectively using user stories, epics, and acceptance criteria, even non-experts can define requirements relatively easily, and development teams can proceed with clarity. User stories, in particular, are well-suited for adjusting to changes in business or customer needs, allowing for flexible management.