What Is Story Elaboration In Agile Business Analysis?

Introduction

Agile Business Analysis is a methodology that uses an iterative approach to quickly deliver business value. Story elaboration is an important part of this process as it helps define the details of a user story. This blog post will explain what story elaboration is and how it fits within the agile business analysis process.

What Is Story Elaboration?

According to the IIBA:

Story Elaboration is used to define the detailed design and acceptance criteria for a story as needed to deliver a working solution.

Story elaboration is the process of gaining a deeper understanding of a user story by breaking it down into smaller, more specific tasks. During story elaboration, the business analyst works with the customer to define the scope of the user story, identify tasks that must be completed, and determine the acceptance criteria for the story.

Story elaboration takes place at the delivery horizon. The goal is to elaborate stories at the lowest level of decomposition. You want to include acceptance criteria and complete the story elaboration to be just in time prior to development starting and just enough detail to allow development to occur. The backlog refinement process includes both story decomposition and story elaboration. And stories are considered complete when you have a shared understanding among stakeholders of what each story should deliver.

Story Elaboration Elements

There are two main story elaboration elements, elicitation and acceptance criteria.

Elaboration

The team gathers for the elaboration discussion to review the story to ensure there is that common understanding and no fundamental misunderstanding of what is needed between the team members.

Acceptance Criteria

When discussing the key considerations around the story, these can then be written up in the form of acceptance criteria. A user story is considered done when it satisfies its acceptance criteria.

Strengths Of Story Elaboration

Story elaboration is an effective tool to ensure that the development team has a clear understanding of the user story, while avoiding the pitfalls of overly detailed documentation. This allows the team to quickly and accurately plan the development process and build the product in an efficient manner. Additionally, story elaboration encourages collaboration between the business analyst and the development team, as the team can provide feedback and guidance about the user story in real time. Additional strengths of story elaboration include:

• Helps the team stay focused
• The teams remain focused on only top priority items
• Reduces elicitation time

Limitations Of Story Elaboration

Story elaboration is not without its limitations. For example, it can be difficult to determine which details are necessary for the development team to know in order to properly build the product. Additionally, some teams may find it difficult to agree on the necessary level of detail for a user story. Finally, story elaboration can be time-consuming and can slow the development process down if the team is not careful. Additional limitations of story elaboration include:

• Can produce stories that have too many or too few details
• Challenging to elicit the appropriate level of detail
• Risk to get information that is no longer correct
• Risk to delay the project

In Summary

Story elaboration is an important tool for Agile Business Analysis, providing the development team with the necessary details to build the product in an efficient manner. It is a means to flesh out the critical elements of the story statement in order to provide a clear understanding of the story and the value that should be gained from it.