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Discussion on: Enough with the User Stories already!

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Mike Bybee • Edited

Personally, I think this illustrates just how needlessly convoluted the entire process is, and why I think anybody who has the opportunity and time to spare should spend at least a few hours a week in some capacity (founder, advisory, fractional CTO, part time freelance dev, whatever) with a tiny, early stage startup. You learn a great deal about what is absolutely necessary and what simply won't fly in such an environment, and it can revolutionize how you approach problems in environments at any scale.

PM methodologies are merely sets of tools. Use the ones that make your work easier, and discard those which do not. If you follow any methodology like religious dogma, you're missing the point entirely.

Much of this can be drastically simplified just by adding a product backlog/icebox to a Trello board that only the lead/architect/PO/PM/CTO(/wearer-of-many-hats) can move into the sprint backlog (ideally after refining to a much simpler extent than discussed here, and only after conversing with whatever dev team there is).

User feedback can feed directly to this product backlog from a simple feedback form in the app via Trello API, where feedback categories map to Trello card labels, with user contact info captured for follow-up as needed for refinement.

It really doesn't need to be all that complicated.