Any team can benefit from having a shared understanding about the work they need to do, and there is a long-standing pattern in the agile community that serves as a guide when articulating requirements as “user stories.” The name for the pattern is the Three C’s, and credit for the concept goes to Ron Jeffries, who was one of many early practitioners of eXtreme Programming (XP) that applied this concept. The Three C’s are: 1) A Card (often a Post-It Note or index card), which serves as a token (whether physical or virtual) and which has a brief description (story title or heading) that clearly articulates the business need; 2) A Conversation, which takes place among members of the team with at least one person who can articulate the voice of the customer, to get clarity about what needs to be done, where a summary of the conversation is often captured in written form, and; 3) A Confirmation, which means that team members verify that they have the same understanding, and where they often articulate via one or more Acceptance Criteria what “done” means for that user story.
Related Media
Three C’s Video
Three C’s Podcasts
Three C’s Example
Related Subjects
Acknowledgements
Authored by Philip Rogers
Photo by Mike Szczepanski on Unsplash
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