The Application of User Stories for Strategic Planning

Abstract

In agile development stories are typically used to define small, independent pieces of functionality that have value for the customer. They are most often used to define requirements for future development. This paper describes a project where stories were used on a much broader scale as part of a strategic planning exercise to identify a long-term development roadmap for a new system. Stories were used not only to define what needed to be built but also to document existing functionality and gaps with current systems. This resulted in the generation of a large number of stories, which created challenges with managing and keeping the stories up to date as the project proceeded.