For years, the “As a user, I want to…” format has been the bedrock of agile development. It was a brilliant tool for shifting focus toward the user. But lately, I’ve seen more and more teams questioning if it’s still serving us or holding us back.
The main critique? User stories can often strip away critical context. They risk turning backlogs into a checklist of features, promoting a “feature factory” mindset where the ‘why’ behind the user’s need gets lost. When an engineer just sees “I want a button to export CSVs,” they miss the underlying job: “I need to share sales data with my manager who doesn’t have system access.”
This is why many are moving toward formats like Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD), problem statements, or outcome-oriented specs. These artifacts force us to articulate the user’s motivation and the bigger picture, leading to better-informed solutions. Fostering this deep, shared understanding across the team is paramount. At Leera.io, we see firsthand how connecting sprint-level work back to strategic outcomes and user feedback prevents this loss of context. True cross-functional collaboration thrives on a shared understanding of the problem, not just a shared to-do list.
What about your team? Are you still finding value in the classic user story, or have you evolved your approach to defining work?