User story
A user story is a concise requirement describing a desired software capability, interaction, or outcome from a user’s or stakeholder’s perspective.
BDD in Action, Second Edition
A user story is a concise requirement describing a capability from the perspective of a user or other stakeholder.
- How it is used
- Organizes manageable slices of a feature for iteration planning and earlier stakeholder feedback.
- How deep it goes
- Defines stories, contrasts them with features, and develops initial criteria through examples without treating the story as a complete specification.
- Examples
- Illustrates story slicing with direct and alternative train routes, and story refinement with secure-password registration.
- What you can do after
- Practice/perform feature slicing, then discuss business rules and refine acceptance criteria before implementation.
Read how BDD in Action, Second Edition explains user story →
Coding with AI
A user story is a concise requirement describing a software capability from the perspective of a user or other stakeholder.
- How it is used
- Turns project requirements into a user-centered guide for planning and building an application.
- How deep it goes
- Demonstrates generation, journey-level review, individual editing, and conversion from requirements to implementation stubs.
- Examples
- Uses a HAM radio practice-test application covering registration, testing, grading, progress tracking, support, and feedback.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via ChatGPT or Gemini to draft, review, validate, and turn requirements into implementation stubs.
Software Testing with Generative AI
A concise requirement statement describing a capability from a user's perspective and the value it provides.
- How it is used
- Frames capabilities and acceptance criteria for TDD loops, API testing, and retrieval-based recommendations for test risks.
- How deep it goes
- Defines role, capability, value, and acceptance criteria through worked examples, then stops short of formal requirements theory.
- Examples
- Uses timesheet tracking, booking cancellation, and branding-update API stories with payload schemas, status codes, authentication, and validation rules.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via TDD loops or retrieval prompts to derive concrete tests and risks from capabilities and acceptance criteria.
Read how Software Testing with Generative AI explains user story →
Delivering Machine Learning Projects: From design to deployment
A user story is a concise description of a system capability from the perspective of a person or group affected by or using the system.
- How it is used
- Uses stakeholder perspectives during pre-project validation to test whether a proposed system can achieve business impact.
- How deep it goes
- Develops requirements, acceptance criteria, harms, corner cases, stakeholder situations, and model-data implications, while deferring detailed elaboration until execution.
- Examples
- Uses first use, normal use, and discontinuation scenarios for sponsors, users, customers, and affected persons.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate implementation viability and specify stakeholder needs, model behavior, data requirements, acceptance criteria, and risks.
Read how Delivering Machine Learning Projects: From design to deployment explains user story →
Build Financial Software with Generative AI (From Scratch)
A user story is a concise Agile requirement statement describing a capability from a user's perspective and its intended benefit.
- How it is used
- Breaks epics and projects into value-focused capabilities for sprint planning and communication with developers, analysts, QA, and stakeholders.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the role-want-benefit format, pairs stories with acceptance criteria, and stops short of teaching Agile methodology comprehensively.
- Examples
- Uses ACH exception viewing and transaction search to connect operator capabilities with payment-processing and customer-support outcomes.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via Agile sprint planning to write focused requirements, identify acceptance criteria, and organize implementation work.
Read how Build Financial Software with Generative AI (From Scratch) explains user story →
Related concepts
- acceptance criteriahas part · Acceptance criteria are verifiable conditions that a requirement, feature, or deliverable must satisfy to be considered acceptable or complete.
- Example Mappingused by · Example Mapping is a collaborative technique that organizes user stories, rules, examples, and questions to clarify requirements and expected behavior.
- requirementscontrasts with · A requirement is a stated need, capability, quality, condition, or constraint that a system, product, solution, or project is expected to satisfy.
- ChatGPTproduced by · ChatGPT is OpenAI’s conversational AI service, which lets users interact with generative AI models and related tools through natural-language prompts.
- requirements discoveryused by · Requirements discovery is the process of eliciting, clarifying, and understanding the needs that software must address.
- epicincludes · An epic is a large unit of related work representing a broad goal or outcome that can be decomposed into smaller work items.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.




