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The good thing about this article is asking why there are user stories. Making up an answer isn't so great, though. Better to look at the history.

Agile concepts are a reaction to authoritarian companies that do "big design up front," where the programmers were supposed to do what they're told, assuming the people who wrote the requirements knew what they were doing. XP was invented by consultants working on a payroll system at a Detroit auto maker. [1]

Often the requirements were bad, resulting in expensive delays or outright project failures. This was meant to be empowering developers in a system where they were at the bottom of the org chart.

If those aren't the kinds of problems you have, maybe user stories aren't the solution?

A related concept is "access to a user representative" where, if you don't understand a requirement or it's ambiguous, you can ask a domain expert what it means. You shouldn't need to call a meeting to do it, either. Originally this meant physical proximity. Unfortunately this gets watered down a lot.

These days we have a lot more communication, often remote. I think there might still be problems getting accurate requirements and with plans changing, though?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...




A user story is good exercise for less technical people to grasp what developers need to know before starting development:

- they are easy to understand as everyone is familiar with concept of telling stories

- they enforce a way of thinking about the feature, e.g.: "when click X, then Y happens", which is easily translatable to workflows

So I wouldn't be so eager to discard them completely - they are very useful tool, although, not the only tool you should use.




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