Presenter: Karen Chance. What is it that makes user stories successful? If a team places the user stories in a list, there is little to distinguish user stories from conventional requirements. However, it is the use of user stories that makes the difference. This talk explores recent research into one Agile implementation in Auckland. I’ll identify ways by which a software development team “distributes” work through members of the team, artefacts, and the physical environment to ease the task of software development. Intended Audience: Managers, agile teams, BAs Level of expertise: Beginner: for organisations kicking off with Agile, or for colleagues newly exposed to Agile but also, for those using user stories at the moment and not getting all they could from them.

1. How software development
teams use user stories: a
distributed cognition perspective

2. Studying user stories in a real-life
context
• Mature agile implementation
• Interviews to build a user story process
• Distributed Cognition for Teams Framework
(DiCot)

3. The traditional idea of the mind is
“I think, therefore I am”
A brain in a vat
The Computer as a
Model of the Brain

4. Distributed Cognition
Mind inescapably part of the world
People share and create new thinking with
• Other People
• Artefacts
• Physical Environment

5. Airspeed indicator with a speed bug
Image thanks to Wikipedia and Creative Commons

6. What this means for user stories?
• Locate what really works and what doesn’t
– Turn up what is good
– Remove what isn’t
• Relate it empirically sound DiCot framework

7. Mediating Artefact
Mediating artefacts include any artefacts that
are brought into coordination in the completion
of the task (Furniss, 2004).

8. The Tangible Nature of the Artefact

9. The Story Wall
An external representation of the progress to a
goal.

10. Representational-Goal Parity

11. Information Hub
PARKING LOT
Information
Buffer

12. Blah, blah, blah, etc – the references
Ed Hutchins
• Cognition in the Wild
• How a cockpit remembers its speeds
• His distributed cognition course is online
http://hci.ucsd.edu/102a/schedule.html
Donald Norman
• Things that Make Us Smart
• The Design of Everyday Things
Dominic Furniss
• Codifying Distributed Cognition

13. Any Questions?