Getting Dirty With Project Management
A product manager needs to know about the processes and should communicate new projects to all the stakeholders. If there is no dedicated project manager at your company then as a product manager it is your duty to make sure that a given project is completed on time.
For this purpose, I have already written a blog with illustrations using Trello. But let’s define Epics, User Stories and the Acceptance Criteria here.
Epics and Epic Spec Sheet
An epic is a grouping of one or more features or functionalities that we want to build. Epic spec sheet contains all the requirement for building a product. The spec sheet has four main areas:
1) Introduction:
- summary of what the features you’re building and why you’re building
- what metrics you’re trying to improve
- links to specific documentation
- Marketing plans, legal requirements
- early wireframes
2) Product Requirements:
- what is required for the specific features that you want to build
3) Design Requirements:
- this section is filled with the designer
- sketches, prototypes
4) Dev Requirements:
- mostly filled out by the engineers after an epic is discussed with them
- contains what must be done on the technology side
User Story
Epics are big and abstract stories that tell what should the product do for the user. But to detail out each and every use case, epics need to be broken down into short tasks called from “user stories” from the perspective of the end user.
The format for user stories is,
As an X, I want to do Y, so that I can Z
Example: As a user, I want to send pictures in a direct message to my friends, so that I can share my favourite photos with them
Acceptance Criteria
Acceptance Criteria allow you to describe the conditions that have to be fulfilled so that the story can be marked as done. The criteria enrich the story, they make it testable, and they ensure that the story can be demoed or released to the users and other stakeholders.
The acceptance criteria would be:
- A pop-up should be opened to upload the photo
- An error should be thrown if the photo size exceeds the max allowed size
- An error should occur if the photo format is different from the allowed formats
A criterion to assess users stories is I.N.V.E.S.T.
- Independent: User stories should be independent as any dependency would make it difficult to prioritize them one over the other
- Negotiable: The implementation details are not specified and are left to the team
- Valuable: User stories should have value to the customers
- Estimable: They should be broken down into the simplest form that the team can work with
- Small: They should be small enough to be finished within a sprint
- Testable: The incremental deliverable should be testable against the acceptance criteria specified
Previous chapter: Product Development Process and The Seven Stages
Next chapter: (…coming soon…)
