From user stories to code in one day?

Abstract

User stories in software engineering serve the purpose of discovering requirements and are used as units of system development. When applying stories in a project, two elements seem to be crucial: the ability to write coherent sequences of events and the ability to transform these sequences into code quickly and resourcefully. In this paper, these qualities are reflected in a notation that can be described as "stories with notions". This notation separates the story's sequence of events from the description of terms used in this sequence. Such a formal separation does not limit and rather enhances invention, at the same time rising the level of consistence, and facilitating translation into models of code. This translation maps domain notions into static code constructs (classes, interfaces) and also maps stories into dynamic sequences of messages. With such a mapping, programming becomes equivalent to skilled transformation of user stories, thus giving shorter development cycles. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.