# Agile Stories

## What Is The Story?

Three Questions:

* Who is asking for something?
* What are they asking for?
* WHY do they want it?

This covers off the three aspects of business value:

* To whom are we providing value?
* With what are we providing value?
* What value is being provided?

There are three categories of thought this can be grouped into:

* Actors
* Objects
* Purposes

An actor is anyone we interact with, who intends to derive something of value from us.

An object is any “thing” we intend to use, to provide value

A purpose is the value we intend to provide.

All good stories must answer all three questions.

## How Big Is The Story?

This is  where estimating comes in. Estimation involves:

* Effort - The degree of difficulty or amount of work expected during the development process. This should include testing.
* Complexity - The number of elements, their relationships, their interdependencies, and the amount of research needed, to complete the story.
* Risk - The scope of the “unknowns” of the story; external dependencies; potential problem areas;   amount of experience with the technologies involved; etc.

These factors constitute a relative measure of story size, not an objective one (like height, weight, or volume).


