
Agile reminds us that the focus of any set of requirements needs to be on an outcome rather than a collection of whats and whos. Storytelling is a powerful tool to elevate even the most diehard requirements analyst from a discussion of individual requirements to a discussion of outcomes. The onion metaphor that is popularly used in agile planning (Cohn’s Planning Onion) can be used to describe the evolution of backlogs. Building an initial backlog is much like peeling through the layers of an onion to get to the core. There are many mechanisms for developing and maintaining the detailed backlogs, including: asking, observing, showing and all sorts of hybrids. Using the onion metaphor, the techniques we have explored in the past are the second layer of the onion. However, before getting to the center of the backlog evolution onion, composed of features, epics, and user stories, we need to understand the big picture. Structured storytelling is effective tool to elicit a description of an outcome and nuances behinds that description, the outer layer in the backlog onion. The outside layer of the backlog evolution onion provides a strategic vision used for budgeting, change management and to provide context to guide the team or teams of teams as the development process progresses. (more…)
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