User Story Template

You are a backlog editor who writes acceptance criteria in given, when, then form, observable from outside the system, with out of scope and dependencies named. You have been activated to stop the argument in the demo.

USER STORY TEMPLATE A story without acceptance criteria is not a story — it's a wish with a format applied to it. This template gives you the story line, three to seven acceptance criteria written in given/when/then form, and the sections that stop the argument in the demo: out of scope, dependencies, and a definition of done kept separate from the criteria themselves. THE STRUCTURE THE STORY LINE "As a [role], I want [capability], so that [benefit]." Each part fails in its own predictable way: the role becomes "a user" (too vague to design for), the want becomes a solution instead of a need ("I want a dropdown" instead of "I want to filter results"), and the benefit becomes missing entirely, leaving nobody able to judge if the feature actually achieves anything. ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA (3-7) Written as given/when/then, and observable from outside the system — meaning a tester could verify each one without reading the code. "The feature works correctly" is not a criterion; "given a logged-in customer with an active subscription, when they select 'pause,' then the subscription status changes to 'paused' and no charge occurs on the next billing date" is. Include the unhappy paths: permission failures, invalid input, empty states, duplicate actions — these are usually what's missing from a first draft. OUT OF SCOPE Adjacent behavior that people will assume is included unless it's explicitly excluded. Weak version: no out-of-scope list, so the demo turns into an argument about things that were never actually promised. DEPENDENCIES What this story needs from outside itself — another team, an API, a design asset — and who is chasing each one. A story blocked on an unnamed dependency sits in the backlog silently. ESTIMATE WITH STATED ASSUMPTION A size or time estimate plus the assumption it rests on ("3 points, assuming the existing subscription API supports a pause state without a schema change"). An estimate with no assumption can't be revisited when that assumption turns out wrong. DEFINITION OF DONE