The Anatomy of a User Story

I know there are a lot of templates out there for what a good user story should look like. I'm not going to go down that path, because honestly I don't care what words you use in your user story as long as you have all of the important information included. Here's what makes a good user story:

Who

In order to build out a piece of functionality with a certain degree of autonomy, I need to be able to make decisions about the little things. The best way to know what the right decision is in any given situation is to know who you're building the functionality for. A single piece of functionality can have many different uses based on the user, so knowing who the user is makes the decision-making process a lot simpler.

What

This one is a bit more obvious. The person looking at the user story needs to know what is being asked for. Now, this shouldn't be a super-specific thing like "red button on the top left corner" or anything, but it needs to give enough detail that I know what's being asked for.

Why

If you ask me, this is the most important part of a user story. Building out functionality is great, but I can go in a completely wrong direction if I don't understand the motivation behind the request. Not only that, but if I truly understand why you're asking for a particular piece of functionality, I may have ideas on how we can provide the value in a better way. That little bit of why can really open up a world of possibilities and discussions.

How

No, now how to implement the functionality requested. That's a major no-no. This how is really how do I know when I'm done? Each user story needs to include a definition of done and acceptance criteria, so that we know when the work is done. How do I know when I've gone far enough with the work and can say it's "done" to a satisfactory level?

So, there's the very basics of what information should be included in a well-written user story. You can write it in the "As a ..., I want ..., so that ...." format, or you can write it any other way you like, as long as this important information is included.