Imitation, epic fails and Agile user stories

Humans love to learn by example. It’s often much easier to simply copy someone than it is to turn theory into practice or to follow instructions. At the same time, fails can be just as instructive (and funnier too). 

Perhaps that’s why our User Story Examples have been so popular. In the six months since we put them out, they’ve been downloaded over 1000 times.

While many people know the benefits of capturing requirements in INVEST-style user stories, it’s not always easy to do in practice. So we put together a blog post summarising what makes a good user stories, along with a set of 10 examples you can learn from: some good, some bad, some downright ugly.

Apply for your discovery workshop today

If you're in New Zealand, you can now apply online for our free discovery workshops.

These workshops are a quick, collaborative and inspiring way to get agreement across your organisation on what the project needs to achieve and to map out how to get there.

We’ve found that this clarity and engagement are key success factors for getting projects over the line.

Because planning and facilitating these workshops is resource-intensive for our team, only projects that meet set criteria are eligible.

Can you help us find that special someone?

We’re looking for a Relationship Manager. The role requires outstanding interpersonal and communication skills and will be crucial to securing the strategic future of the company.

Boost’s award-winning team culture means this role won’t be like other sales jobs. Because our purpose as a company is to help others have a positive and lasting impact, our relationships with our clients are genuinely collaborative. And as a freedom-centred workplace, the whole team is empowered to make sure our clients get what they need from the relationship. You can learn more about working at Boost here.

We’re after someone who is an expert at developing relationships with new and existing clients by building trust and constantly working to deliver value. 

If this sounds like someone you know, please flick them this email.

And if it sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you today.

Check out our Agile training on YouTube  →

Planning your Agile training

With our Agile Professional Foundation courses booking up early, it’s worth planning in advance to make sure you don’t miss out. 

Our next three courses are on:

• April 20–21 (the week after Easter, in case you’re taking time off)
• August 10–11
• October 19–20

Because it’s practical and interactive, the course sets you up to deliver more the moment you get back to work. Here are some things to consider before you come to make sure you get the most from the training.

• Think about the problems you want to resolve with your current way of working, and bring along any questions you have.
• Do the course with someone you work with, so you can bounce ideas off each other.
• Give a wee bit of thought to the first piece of work you could tackle to put what you've learned into practice (ideally something small and discrete that you and your fellow Agilists have the autonomy to run in an Agile way). 

Don’t stress too much about this last point; the right piece of work will be clearer once you’ve done the course.

Watch out COVID-19, AI might come for you next

With COVID-19 wreaking havoc around the world, we thought it would be nice to end the newsletter with some good news on the health front.

Antibiotic resistant superbugs are one of the world’s biggest health threats. That’s why the news that an AI has found a new super-antibiotic is a big deal. Trained on a dataset of molecular features known to take out pathogens, it was set loose on a collection of compounds and told to look for ones that looked deadly but different to existing drugs.

The result was halicin. Named after HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, halicin has been shown to kill off cultures of some of the scariest superbugs out there, and in an entirely novel way.