Conversation

This is the key element. Everything we do in this chapter leads to improving the conversation. I would like to emphasize the conversation word. It should be an interactive storytelling experience. Other people in the room should ask many questions, and everyone should work toward the shared understanding.

The number of people in a user story conversation should be kept to a minimum. If you invite too many people to a meeting, it will turn into someone presenting, while the others checking Facebook on their phones. To make sure that you have a conversation, you want to invite five or fewer people. The other problem might be stage-fright. As a frequent conference speaker, I'm quite used to speaking in front of a large crowd; however, for some people, speaking to more than five is a torture.

Organizing large meetings in a corporate environment can be difficult. That's fortunate because large meetings are a total waste of time for all participants. Many of us have survived countless meetings, which could have been solved by an e-mail or a discussion among four people. Although it's great to involve the UX director in as many things as possible, I would have preferred to work on something meaningful during many of those 10-plus person mega-meetings, where nothing is actionable for me at the end. Those meetings are usually the longest. People get bored, and some of them might feel the need to say something, comment on something, and then if some people do, there is a peer-pressure, so everyone has to add some random stuff to the conversation. After three hours, nothing is decided or really discussed, and we agree to have another meeting in the near future.

A small group of people usually have an easy time organizing a meeting, even ad hoc. Those meetings are faster, and making them phone/video conferences is much easier.

Another extreme is when someone gives an expert analysis of the user stories, so everyone can avoid the meeting. This approach totally defeats the purpose of user stories. Without communication and knowledge sharing, there will be no solution and there will be no shared understanding.