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Inception activity for discovering User Stories

On this blog post I share an activity I used on my last Inception.  I found this activity very useful to kick start the User Stories creation.

What are the goals of this project?
This question  triggered the conversation about the business goals for the project.

Who will use this system? What are their roles?
These questions disclosed the personas (with their roles) for the project. Goals and personas were written on post-its. Large pink post-it was used for goals, and small colorful post-its were used for personas. This is shown on the photo below. After having written a few goals and personas, the team started brainstorming for creating User Stories.

As a X, I want Y so that Z.
Note that X and Z were already known variables (personas and goals). We were now looking for the Ys.

So, what does X want from the system in order to achieve Z?
For example: What does an OPS dude want from the system in order to monitor the browser against system overflow?

User stories were being written...

Soon these stories were combined into features (blue post it). Usually a feature would have from two to eight stories.

This whole process was not linear and definitive. Index cards (for stories) and colorful post-it (goals, personas and features) were written and re-written a few times. Below are a few photos showing index cards and post-its. Posted by Paulo Caroli at 11:45 AM Labels: Discovery, Inception, User Story Jason Yip said...

I would normally suggest using Goals -> Activities -> Roles / Features

Goals - What are we trying to achieve with the project?
Activities - What needs to happen to achieve those Goals?
Roles - What roles might exist to support those Activities?
Features - What features might exist to support those Roles and Activities?

And of course iteration of all this

May 2, 2012 at 4:37 PM 
Essentially the most emotionally intense color, red symbolizes Chinese Products love and passion. Red clothing is noticed and makes the wearer appear big-time.
