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This is one of the definitions that I asw for user stories -

When the time has come for creating user stories, one of the developers (or the product owner in Scrum) gets together with a customer representative. The customer is responsible for formulating the user stories. The developer may use a series of questions to get the customer going, such as asking if some particular functionality is desired, but must be careful not to dominate the idea creation process.

In a large organization there could be multiple lines of business. For a particular line of business , there could be multiple applications (more than 10) that may be involved in fulfilling a business requirement. The requirement to each of these application teams could be provided by a business analyst and the high level solution could be formulated by a solution designer.

In scenarios such as these , would a single user story be defined for a specific change request that impacts multiple applications or would different user stories be created for each application? If it is a single user story then would a separate SRS be defined for each impacted application would it need to be associated with the user story defined?

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  • Can you give us an example what you mean with "involving multible applications"?
    – k3b
    Feb 11, 2013 at 7:55
  • For instance when a user places an order to purchase a mobile phone service in AT&T or Verizon , there could be a number of applications involved in fulfilling the order. A CRM system to capture the order , an order management system that orchestrates the order , number of webservices each providing a unique capability (credit check / shipping etc) that could be consumed by the order management application , provisioning / activation application and billing application . So a specific change could impact all these applications. Feb 11, 2013 at 16:39

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The effect on contributing systems is irrelevant at the level of a user story. The user does not care how it works.

As a [user role], I want [something] so that [benefit]

Ex: As a [mobile phone customer], I want [buy a phone] so that [I can make phone calls].

Note the total absence of any mention for the need to build cell towers ;)

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  • Is it not correct to define a user story for a each constituent system. We use rally to define and track the progress of each user story.If a user story is defined as something common for program , then it might be difficult for the individual teams to track the progress. So can a user story be defined at an application level? Feb 12, 2013 at 15:05
  • @PunterVicky: I'm not sure I understand the question. If you asking can a high-level user story whose implementation spans multiple application systems be broken down into subordinate stories for each subsystem, I say yes. If you're asking can a user story be used to define some common application functionality, such as a library function, I'd say both yes and no. Yes, if you really want to, but no, it should not be necessary; implementing the library function would be a task subordinate to an existing Story. In general, track only what is necessary. Feb 13, 2013 at 17:25
  • Thx Steve.I though story when created for component systems would be same as the high-level user story as the user story is something that defines what a specific role wants would not vary based on the constituent applications.When I said track the progress this what I meant - Each user story could have multiple system requirements. Each system requirement might be fulfilled by an application that is part of the overall project.Each component application would have a dev & qa team and managers of these teams might want to track if a user story is developed / tested in the release successfully. Feb 13, 2013 at 17:43

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