generic user stories

You should write each user story in terms of the value that will be delivered, independently and by each one, in each increment.

In other words, you should only author separate user stories if the associated value can be delivered separately. The Product Owner should have an opinion on this, as he or she is accountable for product value and an incremental return on investment.

Hi Ian,


Thanks for the reply. For a city tourism site there are many sights and events to visit, and each of these epic topics have exactly the same sub user stories (which are many actually). So you're saying i would need to write them out for every separate epic as one generic block of user stories holds no value on its own?
There is a product owner involved but she's not experienced enough in scrum methodology to ask her this.
I just want to make sure i follow the methodology according to best practice.

Thanks again.

i read my post again and it's possible you'd misread my question: i mean i need to write the user stories for every epic and not write them once as a generic block because that has no actual value.

> So you're saying i would need to write them
> out for every separate epic as one generic
> block of user stories holds no value on its own? 

I'm saying that each item in the Product Backlog must make an independent contribution to the delivery of value in an increment. Whether these items are user stories, epics, features, or some other construct is immaterial (Scrum is agnostic as to how backlog items are expressed). What matters is that they can be prioritized relative to each other in pursuit of Sprint Goals.

If you are making decisions about the value that will be delivered by each backlog item, then you have started doing the Product Owner's job.

each item in the Product Backlog must make an independent contribution to the delivery of value in an increment

as a newbie I dare to ask how to deal with other generic "requirements" like style guides? E.g. I want to have the same look$feel on all screen (background, logos, character set etc.). Do I state hat in one user story ("as user I want to have the same look&feel throughout the site, i.e. background black, logo upper right corner etc.")?

Thanx - Markus

> how to deal with other generic "requirements" like style guides? 

Depending on how generic they are, you might reference them in the acceptance criteria of the stories, or in the Definition of Done.