Agile Software Development 

Agile software development has evolved in computing industry gaining everyone's attention. In this article I am going to explain few important facts about its components. 

What is a User Story?

Basically it should describe a functionality that will be valuable to a user / purchaser of a software.

It should comprised of :

1. Description of the story 

2. Conversations we had regarding the user story.

3. Tests to determine when the user story is completed. 

Importantly ,

* User stories should represents the functionality that will be valued by users. Users will not be interested in technical details of the system instead the output they expect.

Eg: The system will use mysql as the database. 

- This does not add a value to user unless the system is going to be interface for using DB's. 

* If the story it self is very large you can break them into several stories. 

* Ideally a user story shall be coded & tested spanning from a day or perhaps half a day to one or two weeks.

* Remember the user stories should be written in the language in business rather than set of technical jargon. Story cards are not contracts its more of a reminder to dev & customer to start the conversation where it was left. 

* Characteristics of a good story are : value added to customers , negotiable , testable , small , estimable , independent. (try to avoid dependencies between stories since this will lead to need of prioritization)

What is velocity? 

After the team decide what  is the iteration length of the project ( i.e each project will be divided into similar size iterations ) the developers will estimate the work they can cover per a iteration.