Reference User Story Workshop

The "Reference User Story Workshop" provides a structured and visual approach to collaboratively determine reference user stories. This framework encourages team alignment on the understanding of complexity, fostering consistency and accuracy in future estimation efforts. This structured template is divided into three essential parts, guiding your team through the process of ordering, estimating, and selecting reference user stories.

1. In the first section, participants collaborate to order a set of 20-25 completed and estimated user stories from the lowest to the highest complexity. This visual arrangement allows the team to collectively grasp the spectrum of complexities within the project.

2. Once the user stories are ordered, participants then assign Fibonacci sequence numbers to each user story. This exercise introduces a quantitative element to the qualitative understanding of complexity.

3. Participants collaboratively choose a set of reference user stories. These reference stories, strategically selected from various complexity levels, serve as benchmarks for future estimation sessions, providing a consistent frame of reference for the team.

Credit for the idea and further information: Why and how to choose reference user stories