Writing agile marketing user stories is a brilliant agile practice that helps your team maintain a user-centric approach to everything they do. Each task, project, and team effort is built around a customer goal that is clearly defined with the user story. Below, you’ll learn how to write great agile marketing user stories in 6 steps.
Do it Systematically
Writing your agile marketing user stories needs to become a part of your team’s routine. Why? Because that’s the only way you can create powerful user stories that make your marketing efforts more powerful and effective.
So, make this a part of your team’s routine to ensure consistency in writing.
Be Super-Clear
Agile user stories need to be simple and to the point. These stories are supposed to sum up the main idea behind a team's task and explain what makes this task important for the end-users.
So, when you’re writing, make sure to:
write short, simple sentences
only include information that carries a meaning
remove everything redundant
This will put everyone’s focus on the same, clearly defined idea, and ensure the team works in unison.
Listen to Customers
Your agile user stories don't need to be the sole product of your team's creativity or experience. Instead, you should base them on the actual needs and problems your customers are facing.
So, where can you find actual customer stories? You have a ton of options:
social media comments and messages
reviews and feedback
customer service messages and conversations
Listen to what your customers have to say and use that as a source of writing your agile user stories.
source: Pexels
Follow a Structure
Each agile user story that you write should be structured the same way. Following a consistent formula will help you deliver better results and compare your previous stories to one another.’
The structure that works best is:
Who? + What? + Why?
Here’s an example of a user story written according to this pattern:
As a team coordinator, I need a remote management tool so I could manage my teams professionally and easily.
You've got the answer to all three questions, blended in one simple and clear sentence. It's how all agile user stories should work. Naturally, you can adjust the formula to fit your specific business needs, but it needs to provide valuable information you can then act upon.
Make it Real
If you write user stories that are in the domain of unachievable and unreal, nobody’s going to benefit from them. Your user stories have to be centred around a goal that is:
hard but possible to achieve
challenging for your team
important for your customers
If you write a user story that reflects a realistic goal, the whole team will be more motivated to work on reaching it. So, be careful not to take it too far.
Break Them Down
Once you create your user story and your team understands the goal set before them, you should break it down and use it to plan action. How will you make it happen?
Once you reach this phase, your agile user story becomes a starting point for a more elaborate written plan that includes:
phases of the upcoming project
steps your team will make
estimated time
set deliverables
In other words, you need to define what makes this user story complete and the team’s job successfully finished. Otherwise, you’ll never be certain whether your team has finished the job or not.
If writing more elaborate plans is a challenge for you, GetGoodGrade can offer their professional writing services. You need to make sure everything you write for your agile marketing team is polished and accurate.
Final Thoughts
Writing great agile marketing user stories is a necessity for teams who want to invest in their user experience and satisfaction. The 6 steps listed above are everything you need for writing high-performing user stories that will get your teams to their goals, efficiently and quickly.