Feature vs User Stories: A Connected Approach

If you have been working on software development using agile methods, then you must have come across the conflicting terminology that different teams seem to use, particularly around how they capture the requirements around a digital platform or product. and user stories. This conflict is epitomised in this discussion thread on this popular technical forum . As one can see from this thread, Features and User stories are bandied about as synonyms, sub-sets or super sets, chunks of functionality. 

In the following section we describe our product definition models and how various product discovery and conceptual design outputs, flow and connect with each other. These elements have been incorporated into Ness's Connected  methodology. Connected is an iterative, customer-centric approach and set of processes that brings together feature discovery, user experience design and software development in a harmonious union. Our interpretation is certainly not the definitive word on this topic but has proven successful in dozens of projects helping various stakeholders i.e.  business users, analysts and developers agree on common vocabulary and connecting the worlds of technology and business. The vocabulary used in Ness Connected is described below:

• Personas: archetypes of users, their objectives and paint points
• Features: this are important capabilities exposed by the application e.g. Contract dashboard
• User Journey: the workflow and touch points of the personas with each of the features
• User Story: are interactions of the personas at the journey touch points with the features exposed by the application. We can attach specific acceptance criteria to each story that will help validation of the feature in user acceptance testing.

These key elements are typically linked together in an experience workflow (a skeleton view is shown below) . Here we can see that the Persona (in this case a warehouse operator) can interact with the same system capability in a number of different ways to achieve different objectives. These are captured as user (persona) stories. Persona pain points are also stories and represent specific user needs requiring attention when designing and validating the system feature. Also, each persona may interact with the same feature in a slightly different manner and these will be captured as distinct user stories.

These definition of connected deliverables have proved extremely useful to delivering the promise of the Ness Connected method – ‘Design the Right Product’ and then ‘Build the Product Right’.  We would be interested in you sharing your own your experience and interpretation of features vs user stories and the flow that you use to connect various deliverables in product discovery and design.