Jobs-to-be-Done Oriented Requirements Engineering: A Method For Defining Job Stories

Abstract

[Context and motivation] Goal orientation is an unrealized promise in the practice of requirements engineering (RE). Conversely, lightweight approaches such as user stories have gained substantial adoption. As critics highlight the limitations of user stories, Job Stories are emerging as an alternative that embeds goal-oriented principles by emphasizing situation, motivation and expected outcome. This new approach has not been studied in research yet. [Question/Problem] Scientific foundations are lacking for the job story artifact and there are no actionable methods for effectively applying job stories. Thus, practitioners may end up creating their own flavor of job stories that may fail to deliver the promised value of the Jobs-to-be-Done theory. [Principal ideas/results] We integrate multiple approaches based on job stories to create a conceptual model of job stories and to construct a generic method for Jobs-to-be-Done Oriented RE. Applying our job story method to an industry case study, we highlight benefits and limitations. [Contribution] Our method aims to bring job stories from craft to discipline, and to provide systematic means for applying Jobs-to-be-Done orientation in practice and for assessing its effectiveness.