What questions do you always ask when reviewing user stories?

Questions
#1

In order to make the process of reviewing User Stories and other software requirements easier and to share out the work across the team, I have agreed to make some check-lists.

My idea is, that I have a pool of recurring question that I usually ask for every ticket, or forget to ask, that I can make into a check-list to be answered ahead of development starting. Obviously this would be a starting point, and more questions and discussion unique to each ticket will be needed.

I am intereste to know, What questions do you always ask when reviewing user stories?

I have some thoughts on this already, I even did a blog post about it in March 2019:

Thanks for your time, I am looking forward to hearing what you all say! I promise I will post my lists once I’ve made them for others to use.

#2

I have this list that I scan and apply as needed…

  • Are there any legal implications?
  • Are we adhering to our ISO requirements?
  • Are we entirely sure the specification is up to date?
  • Can we recover from data loss?
  • Do the designs adhere to our branding standards?
  • Do we have a rollback strategy?
  • Does the copy make sense?
  • Does the data persist?
  • Does this meet our business need?
  • Does this respect our users privacy?
  • Does this solve the users problem?
  • How does this look in Dark mode?
  • How does this perform on our minimum supported devices?
  • how fast should this be?
  • How should a screenreader read this?
  • How should the user experience an intentional downgrade?
  • how slow is too slow?
  • If a hacker broke in how much damage could they do?
  • If this breaks for the user, is the situation recoverable?
  • Is the interaction discoverable?
  • Is this in line with our accounting expectations?
  • Is this in line with our mission?
  • Should this be tracked in analytics?
  • what about loading when data is present?
  • What are the security implications?
  • What assumptions have we made that might be incorrect?
  • What attributes could come into play?
  • What did the user research say?
  • what does a loading state look like?
  • What does a side by side comparison reveal?
  • What happens after a downgrade?
  • what happens after upgrade?
  • What happens if the file gets corrupted?
  • what happens if the request fails?
  • What happens if the user disallows when permission is requested?
  • what happens in landscape mode?
  • What happens on older versions?
  • what happens when the machine is run in safe mode?
  • what happens when the text is longer?
  • What happens when the user has JS disabled?
  • what happens when the user logs out?
  • what happens when there is no data?
  • What if I put an emoji here?
  • what if the timezone is different than my own?
  • What if the user double clicks instead of single clicks?
  • what if the user is colorblind?
  • what if the user is running a proxy?
  • What if the user never refreshes?
  • what if the user zooms the browser?
  • what if there are more than expected?
  • what if there are one thousand?
  • what if there is only one?
  • What is ambiguous?
  • What is the offline experience like?
  • what should it look like on mobile?
  • What will logged out users see?
  • What’s missing? What am I missing?
  • When does the cache expire?
  • where can a user get help if needed?
  • Where could our test data be made more like real user data?
  • Who might be adversely affected by this?
  • Who should be able to perform this action?
  • Will this work for Linux users?
  • Will this work for Windows users?
2 Likes
#3

That is amazing thank you!