Story Carding

Process

Description

Story cards are bits of narrative describing features of the system under development. They are called "cards" because in traditional extreme programming practice, they were written on paper index cards. The constraints of an index card were considered a plus -- the writing on the card is intended to be a marker for communication, not a comprehensive requirements document that fully describes the feature represented by the story.

Story cards (or more simply put "stories") are useful in many ways. They can be prioritized easily, or displayed within swimlanes on the wall in order to communicate progress.

Some teams still use paper story cards and others capture their "cards" in electronic format using tools such as Pivotal Tracker http://pivotaltracker.com

This practice is called Story Carding to denote the usage of story cards in your development process. The origination of story cards varies. Some will schedule a meeting to create a batch (or "backlog") of stories. Others will create stories on an ad-hoc basis throughout the life of a project.

Firms practicing Story Carding

  • eLabs

    We start our projects with a story carding workshop with the client, where we create the initial stories in Pivotal Tracker. These are added to, revised and prioritized continuously and drive the entire project.
    4

  • Integrum

    From the beginning of our interaction with a client through the final day of development, we use our User Story cards to visibly denote what is "on the board" for the current iteration and what is to come and has been. We stick to actual note cards, push pins and sharpies.
    2

  • Microplace

    Though we started with a mix of cards and software to track requirements, it quickly became clear that the software was slowing us down. We decided to get rid of the software and haven't captured a story in digital form in over a year. Not only that, we switched from 3x5 cards to 3x2.5 (half-index cards) which seemed to have had a major impact on how much more clear and precise the stories tend to be.
    2

  • Rubaidh

    We currently use Pivotal Tracker to track our stories, iterations and releases. I have a sneaking suspicion we might revert back to index cards at some point, though, at least for projects where we can have an on-site customer.
    1

  • Asynchrony Solutions

    1

  • Eden Development

    We use Pivotal for all our story carding. Clients love it.
    1

  • Bekk Consulting AS

    1

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