User Story - User Stories and Use Cases

User Stories and Use Cases

While both user stories and use cases serve the purpose to capture specific user requirements in terms of interactions between the user and the system, there are major differences between them.

User Stories	Use Cases
Provide a small-scale and easy-to-use presentation of information. Are generally formulated in the everyday language of the user and contain little detail, thus remaining open to interpretation. They should help the reader understand what the software should accomplish. Must be accompanied by Acceptance Testing procedures (acceptance criteria) for clarification of behavior where stories appear ambiguous.	Describe a process and its steps in detail, and may be worded in terms of a formal model. A use case is intended to provide sufficient detail for it to be understood on its own. A use case has been described as “a generalized description of a set of interactions between the system and one or more actors, where an actor is either a user or another system”. May be delivered in a stand-alone document.

User Stories

Use Cases

Provide a small-scale and easy-to-use presentation of information. Are generally formulated in the everyday language of the user and contain little detail, thus remaining open to interpretation. They should help the reader understand what the software should accomplish.
Must be accompanied by Acceptance Testing procedures (acceptance criteria) for clarification of behavior where stories appear ambiguous.

Describe a process and its steps in detail, and may be worded in terms of a formal model. A use case is intended to provide sufficient detail for it to be understood on its own. A use case has been described as “a generalized description of a set of interactions between the system and one or more actors, where an actor is either a user or another system”.
May be delivered in a stand-alone document.

Famous quotes containing the words user, stories and/or cases:

“A worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)

“But stories that live longest
Are sung above the glass,
And Parnell loved his country
And Parnell loved his lass.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

“Only by being guilty of Folly does mortal man in many cases arrive at the perception of Sense. A thought which should forever free us from hasty imprecations upon our ever-recurring intervals of Folly; since though Folly be our teacher, Sense is the lesson she teaches; since, if Folly wholly depart from us, Further Sense will be her companion in the flight, and we will be left standing midway in wisdom.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)

Related Phrases

Related Words