Comments on Doc On Dev: Telling the complete story

It can be interesting to phrase the "As a...&...

2011-05-04T13:57:17.543-04:00

It can be interesting to phrase the "As a..." and "So I can..." parts when what you're developing is a service to be invoked (or "consumed") by applications.

"As a consuming application, I want to pull a current inventory, so I can, um..." Huh.

Great post. I shared it with the rest of my cowor...

2011-02-16T16:02:28.775-05:00

Great post. I shared it with the rest of my coworkers and we've immediately started using the format.

In our case the 'as a' first makes more sense, since we have lots of different types of users and potential customers and every new feature needs to be seen through that lens. However, on projects with less user types I can see how that might change. I think the important part is that the 'i want to' is never first. The 'I want to' is usually all we would see in a standard requirements document, but in most cases, the 'in order to' is actually what matters to them, and in some cases doesn't line up with what they think they want.

The underlying motivation is the same, but I'm...

2011-02-14T12:44:30.938-05:00

The underlying motivation is the same, but I'm partial to the feature injection format of
In order to
As a
I want to

It is a subtle difference, but I find that focusing on the problem to solve before the persona helps me.

Good post.