We are not a fan of the fabled 'User Story'!

Other consultancies and even Anaplan advocate using them. But are they not more like 'love stories' than a set of detailed user requirements?

Don't get us wrong we love a good love story; the romance, the passion and the 'will they or wont they'! But while they get the heart racing they have a tendency to drive you crazy.

Read on to learn about our experiences of using them and how we have co-opted them with other tools to get a truer, more reliable and deeper understanding of what our users need from their Anaplan projects.

❤️ User stories allow us to create passionate visions of a new future

User stories allow us to fantasise about the possibilities of a future yet to be, to paint vivid images of a world in which Anaplan saves us from the drudgery of data collection, cleansing and presentation. They empower us to create the who, what, why, when and how. We get to stand up and challenge the status quo and imagine a better world.

💔 User stories lack a coherent model wide purpose

However, like those newly in love, user stories are singular in purpose and can place too little emphasis on the wider modelling landscape. Modellers develop a singular focus on delivering isolated users stories at the expense of the overall model architecture. And like their love story protagonists they neglect all others in pursuit of their new found romance.

💔 Creating valuable and detailed user stories takes time

We have found that clients are often not able to articulate their user stories in sufficient detail for them to be valuable to modellers. They are time consuming and like all relationships they take time to create and nurtures. We find that clients are often keen to start modelling before they have completed all the required user stories.

💚 How do we sustain the romance yet create sufficiently detailed requirements to ensure success

We have found that user stories are fantastic tools for tapping into the emotional requirements. They help us to better understand the 'why' and allowing us to create designs which are more user focused. But they are poor in drawing out the technical design elements such as the process details and calculation logic.

✅ Process mapping

We have discovered that process mapping can be a great tool to showcase our model design, overall architecture and to reassure clients that we have a plan to realise the dream captured in the user stories. They are physical design artifacts that we and the client can use to manage progress.

✅ Systems thinking

We use systems thinking as an approach which views design challenges as a means to improving flow though a whole system; data flows such as inputs and outputs, forecast and budget along with end user reports and outcomes. Systems thinking is holistic and sees the whole as greater than the sum of its parts.

We like user stories really but they must be coupled with other more technical and detailed tools to be truly effective.