Insight of good “storytelling”

In this course, It is necessary for me to have direct communication with the stakeholders. Inevitably, I will use different means to allow them proactively talk about what the problem is, what they expect and the change they want to see. All these contents includes their life experience and reflection, in another word—–stories. Me as a researcher in Applied Imagination have to convert the conversations, the complexities into a new story, which is very challenging in practice. How can I better communicate with stakeholders and help them to articulate their stories? Doug Rose, who is an experienced innovation management coach, gives many meaningful insights on this subject.

So, What is good storytelling?

Doug Rose claimed that the user story should contain a clear value statement and it should be written from the perspective of the stakeholders. It is similar to brand vision statement, which should base on customer value, brand value, bliefs, and objectives. A good brand vision can allow the business developers and users to ask and discuss the “How can” questions. For example, the mission statement for Google is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” rather than being the biggest online search engine.

“Bad” stories examples:

“As a restaurant owner, I want to be able to print out, email and text my reservation list so that we know how many people to expect.” 

——-This story isn’t independent. It has a long list of value statements, so it’s really three stories. This would make it very difficult to estimate and deliver. 

“As a customer, I want an email copy of my receipt so that I can have it on my phone.”

——-This story doesn’t have a clear value statement. It doesn’t say why the customer might value a copy on their phone. So the creative teams won’t have the flexibility to find the best way of satisfying the customer. They may want a copy so they can order the same thing next time or they’re keeping track of their expenses. The team would want to know this value so they can better deliver the product. 

“As a developer, I want to design the database tables so that the restaurant owner can add reservation information.”

——This user story talks about technical requirements and is not written from the perspective of the customer. It also doesn’t encourage a conversation or identify any customer value. 

Reference:

Rose,D(2018) Agile Foundations [online] Available on: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/agile-foundations