Managing User Stories for SCRUM in HP Quality Center 10

Many organizations are using user stories as they apply Agile software development practices. User stories are central to the SCRUM framework. A user story is a software system requirement formulated as one or two sentences in the everyday language of the user. HP Quality Center can be configured to support SCRUM and user stories.

Guidelines & Suggestions

* There are numerous tools for documenting user stories, including 3 x 5 cards, MS Word and MS Excel. Unfortunately, these tools do not have a direct integration with requirement management, test management and defect management. HP Quality Center provides this single tool integration.

* HP Quality Center's trace from and trace to functionality allows the association of user stories with product planning requirements. This ensures that all of the documented user stories are within product scope, as well as provides a mechanism for assessing the impact of changes to product scope.

* Requirements in HP Quality Center can have a project-defined requirement type associated with it. These requirement types are created by a project administrator and can support the SCRUM methodology. These would include the requirement types: Folder, User Story and Task. Each requirement type can have custom fields created that support user story and task management.

* The SCRUM methodology calls for a product backlog, release backlog, and sprint backlog. These can be created with a requirement type of Folder. User stories are children of the sprint they are assigned to. A suggested hierarchy supporting SCRUM and user stories is:

  Product Backlog Folder
       Release Backlog Folder
            Sprint Backlog Folder
                 User Story Requirement Type

* Requirements with the type of Task can be created and organized as children of a user story. These tasks represent the ''how'' for the user story's ''what.'' Custom fields for these tasks would include:

 Current Estimated Effort: best guess as of now 
 Actual Spent Effort: time already spent by development
 Remaining Effort: Calculated value, Current Estimate minus Actual Spent
 Percentage Completed: Calculated value, Actual Spent divided by Current Estimate

Note: the calculated values require customized programming.

* Through customized programming, task efforts can be aggregated to the same custom attributes at the user story level and then to parent folder levels. Progress can be seen directly on all levels via the Percentage Complete field.

* SCRUM burn-up and burn-down charts can be created from the aggregated values using the Dashboard functionality of HP Quality Center.

* Use the Attachment tab or the Rich Content tab to associate additional user story information.

* The Requirement Grid view is an excellent method for managing the status, author/ownership, and priority of the user stories. Creating a favorite view of the requirements grid filtered on User Story facilitates this activity.

* A quick report of all user stories can be created using the Standard Requirement Report (one of the standard HP Quality Center reports) filtered on User Story.

* The Document Generator can be used to create a formal User Story Specification.

* User stories can be associated with tests in the Test Plan. This provides the ability to show test coverage of user stories.

* Releases can be created in the Management Module. These releases coincide with the product release strategy in SCRUM planning.

* Test cycles also can be created and associated with a release. They can be named for SCRUM sprints. The user stories and tasks then can be associated with SCRUM Sprint Test Cycles. This allows associ