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Use case vs. user story: How and when to use each
- As a product manager, you express customer needs to your development teams so that you can work together to build the best possible solution.
- Two common approaches to requirements are use cases and user stories. Use cases are more detailed and explain how the system should be working, whereas, user stories focus on a feature’s result.
- Use cases let you build understanding stakeholders because you write out a structured requirement flow for the system behavior. On the other hand, use cases are time consuming and complex products require lots of cases.
- User stories need to be as simple as possible to prevent misunderstanding between stakeholders. They represent acceptance criteria and desired features that provide value to customers.
- Use cases and user stories are both important parts of the software development cycle and each describe a specific feature. User stories are more user centric and use cases are more system behavior centric.
- When to use each approach and how to implement. As a product manager, if you want to explain a user need or a product goal, you need to write user stories. Typical use cases have actors, description, preconditions, main flow, alternative flows, and dependencies components.
- User stories tend to be the preference for agile, but don’t think that means that agile doesn’t require details. When you find yourself needing detailed requirements, turn towards use cases instead. And sometimes you can even mix the two methods together.
- Although the road you take for the two methods differs, they both focus on understanding your customer’s needs. Choose the method that best suits your product or team style and remember that you can change them to adapt to new needs or circumstances.
- Either way, understanding requirements gives you the best chance at building successful, sustainable products.
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