This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Laurent Bossavit. Original Post: You don't hack the code, why hack the process ? Feed Title: Incipient(thoughts) Feed URL: http://bossavit.com/thoughts/index.rdf Feed Description: You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all alike. You're in a maze of twisty little decisions, all different. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Laurent Bossavit Latest Posts From Incipient(thoughts)

We rely a lot on software tools already, so why not for user stories ? Why do you make such a big deal of using index cards for user stories, rather than an electronic document ?

No big deal. It's just that the properties of the two media are different. This means that people will behave differently when using one as opposed to the other.

By comparison, think of reading books on paper vs. on-screen. There are practical, economic and affective differences. Practical: it's easier to carry the paper book around, to flip idly through the pages, etc. Economic: if you lose the book, it's cheap to replace, and cheap to use for other purposes (doorstop, fire starter, whatever). Affective: many people prefer the "feel" of paper books.

All this is a matter of preferences that are rather easily shifted, but nevertheless it has a very real and tangible effect on behaviour: people treat stuff on paper differently than they treat stuff inside computers.

Similarly index cards imply different behaviours than an electronic equivalent. "Looking at the stories", when they are on cards, involves getting up from your seat, going to the wall display where they are arrayed, perhaps taking them down from the wall temporarily before pinning them back. On your way to the wall you'll be looking around the office at your coworkers, perhaps waving "hi" or having a word with someone in passing.

Contrast the computerized "user story": you open the Excel spreadsheet, look at it, close the document. Economical in effort - you have hardly moved a muscle. You have also not had a conversation, or a chance to notice your coworkers. Of course these are subtle effects - but does that mean they will have negligible consequences ?

Now, your responsibility, when you take the decision of tracking stories in software, is to *think* about what effects it will have on how people estimates schedule and effort, how they prioritize by value, how easily they will converse about story details, and so on.

Here's a suggestion. Take a blank sheet of paper. Draw a vertical line down the middle, and a horizontal line through. The left-hand side is "user stories on index cards". In the top quadrant, write at least five important positive effects they could have on your project. In the bottom, write five important negatives. Do the same thing on the right hand side, for electronic stories. Then repeat the whole thing within a group with your teammates. Once you've done this, decide what to do. A few months later, re-evaluate the decision, again in a group. Did it bring the expected benefits ? Did it have the expected shortcomings ?

There are other ways of making a considered decision about cards vs. electronic. My point is that it's not enough to think to yourself "just because Beck says so, doesn't mean cards are really important, so I'll just use software, because a tool is cool".

If you do that, please don't go around saying you have "adapted XP". You have merely hacked around with it. And hacking is precisely what one would want to do less of.