A good user story vs a bad one

Been practicing BDD using the usual suspects like RSpec and Cucumber for user stories in conjunction with stakeholders, to reveal and document behavior, as well as drive development in a large legacy code base.

I was asked this question yesterday at a meetup.

What is the difference between a good User story and a bad one?

From my end based on experience and reading literature i summarise thus:

  • A good user story should be short and sweet;  A bad one is nothing short of being bulky and clunky.
  • A good user story should focus on the “WHAT” and not the “HOW”;  A bad one may try to capture the “WHAT” and “HOW”.
  • A good user story should reflect the vision of the product owner; A bad one would not.
  • A good user story should be broken down properly (questionable and able to drive conversations); A bad one would be obscure and unable to drive curiosity.
  • A good user story should paint the picture properly for the Software Engineers (who may not have domain knowledge at first) but are expected to deliver value;  A bad one will paint a totally different picture.

For more information on this: http://www.allaboutagile.com/writing-good-user-stories/