Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
I want to discuss story cards.
This is a tool that is used to manage scope, schedule, and resources.
It is the fundamental building block of an agile scrum project.
So let's get started.
First, the professional technical term is a product backlog item,
but everyone calls them story cards.
All of the deliverables from all of the stakeholders are listed on a story card.
One story card per deliverable.
If it isn't on a story card, then it will not be done as part of the project.
That is why we say the story cards describe the scope of the project.
And I'll show you in a minute that the story card will include an estimate which
is to manage resources.
And the stories are moved through different stages of a project which
gives us our schedule status.
When we get into the sprint planning,
you'll find that sometimes Story Cards are not just a story, they're an epic.
When that happens, the story card will get deployed into chapters.
And even then the stories are often further deployed into activities in order
to further describe the scope.
A classic example of deliverable deployment.
The story cards are prioritized by the product owner from the highest priority to
the lowest, number one to number last, and there are no ties allowed.
This will be important information as the team manages the work within the time box.
The lowest priority item often are not completed in order to ensure
the high priority items are done, and are done right.
So let's take a look at each of the elements of a story card.
The story is the description of the deliverable is often written as
a description of what should happen when a user takes a certain action.
The product owner will usually write this based upon their discussions with
the various stakeholders.
The Demo Criteria embodies the quality control requirements for the story.
It describes the pass or
fail conditions that will indicate that the story has been successfully developed.
Again, this is written by the product owner.
The Category is used by the product owner to classify stories.
This can be done in several different ways including categorization by release and
categorization by the need for every story such as a must have, should have,
nice to have designation.
The Priority of the story is also set by the product owner.
This can change from sprint to sprint, but it's always set by the product owner.
The Estimate is created by the scrum team members not the product owner or
scrum master, and it is normally described in terms of the number of hours of work or
some other measure of effort.
This estimate is revised daily, once the story has been started.
And will then indicate an estimate of the remaining hours of work until the story is
complete.
The Notes section is often used by the scrum team during planning and
execution to keep track of special items associated with this story.
It can contain anything that the scrum team finds helpful.
The story card is not only used in planning, it will be used for
tracking the sprint progress on the scrum board.
In that regard, it's similar to the WBS dictionary,
which you may recall has columns for scope, schedule, resources, and status.
The story card is the basic building block of Agile Scrum planning and tracking.
They're the point of integration of scope, schedule,
and resources, the classic project triple constraint.