Little heads up, Im the only lonely dev building/planning/mocking my project as I go. Ive come up with a preview release that does only the core aspects of the system, with good business value and I've coded most of the UI as dirty throw-able mockups over nicely abstracted and very minimal base code. In the end I know quite well what my clients want on the whole.
I can't take agile-ish cowboying anymore because Im completely dis-organized and have no paper plan and since my clients are happy, things are getting more complex with more features and ideas. So I started using and learning Agile & Scrum
Here are my problems:
I know what a functional spec is.(sample):
Do all user stories and/or scenarios become part of the functional spec?
I know what user stories and tasks are.
Are these kinda user stories? I dont see any Business Value reason added to them.
I made a mind map using freemind, I had problems like this:
Actor : Finance Manager Can Add a Financial Plan into the system because well thats the point of it?
What Business Value reason do I add for things like this?
Example : A user needs to be able to
add a blog article (in the blogger
app) because..?? Its the point of a
blogger app, it centers around that feature?
How do I go into the finer details and system definitions:
Actor: Finance Manager Action: Adds a finance plan.
This adding is a complicated process with lots of steps.
What User Story will describe what a finance plan in the system is ??
I can add it into the functional spec under definitions explaining what a finance plan is and how one needs to add it into the system, but how do I get to the backlog planning from there?
Example: A Blog Article is mostly a
textual document that can be written
in rich text in the system. To add a
blog article one must......
But how do you create backlog list/features out of this? Where are the user stories for what a blog article is and how one adds/removes it?
Finally, I'm a little confused about the relations between functional specs and user stories. Will my spec contain user stories in them with UI mockups?
Now will these user stories then branch out tasks which will make up something like a technical specification?
Example : EditorUser Can add a blog article.
Use XML to store blog article.
Add a form to add blog.
Add Windows Live Writer Support.
That would be agile tasks but would that also be part of/or form the technical specs?
Some concrete examples/answers of my questions would be nice!!
