If you are working on an agile project, it is almost certain that you are using Stories to describe your backlog of work. It is another near-certainty that if you are using Stories, you write them down using this format:
“As a <user or stakeholder type>
I want <some software feature>
So that <some business value>”
As someone who cares about the state of agile practice, I want to offer some alternatives, so that agile teams remember that the point of the story is in the telling, not the template. The shared understanding comes from the conversation, not the card. By offering you different ways to ‘tell’ the story in its short written form, I hope you will be able to re-ignite a greater level of meaning, interest and engagement in your team’s discussions about the work they are doing to build great software that matters to people.