Most agile teams these days organise their backlog into user stories. The user story isn't mandatory in any agile methodology but they have become the defacto standard for agile projects. There are many good reasons for this, not least of which is that a well written user story keeps the focus squarely on delivering something of value to the user. Many user stories though are not well written. It takes more than using "story normal form" - As a I want so that I can - to generate a good story.

Many of the backlogs I see are filled with stories that, frankly, stink. Bad stories don't keep the focus on what is important. They distract, confuse and mislead. There are some criteria like INVEST that we use to assess user stories and properly applied they make a big difference to the quality of the stories. They do take some time to learn and apply though so I'll give you a few quick tips to get started. Over the years I have come across a number of common mistakes that teams make when writing stories that cause their backlogs to stink –

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