2026 Cohort: User Story Development & Solution Design, with Sienna Howlett-Wagner and Staci Cotter

Sienna Howlett-Wagner and Staci Cotter

Sienna is an F&SCM Industry Delivery Consultant & TechFluent Board Treasurer

Staci is a Senior Project Manager at WinfoSoft

User Story Development & Solution Design

In this session, you will learn to properly develop User Stories distilling them from Requirements and gathering the details needed from your client through proper Backlog Grooming techniques. Additionally, we will review ways to manage a backlog properly whether you have basic tools (Excel) or nirvana (GYDE365), or something in between, to assist. After the User Stories are defined, they can be broken down further into Tasks for proper Solution Design, which is the next step in the Development Process and the next logical learning objective for this course. By the end of this course, you will know how to properly document your project’s Scope and Design in a manner that is traceable, trackable and consumable for building, testing and deployment.

• Developing User Stories – Learn to distill User Stories from Requirements and gather essential details through effective Backlog Grooming techniques.
• Backlog Management – Understand strategies for managing a backlog using various tools, from basic (Excel) to advanced (GYDE365), and everything in between.
• Breaking Down User Stories into Tasks – Gain the ability to refine User Stories into Tasks to support proper Solution Design.
• Solution Design Process – Understand how Task definition leads into the next step of the Development Process, ensuring a logical workflow.
• Project Scope & Design Documentation – Learn to document project Scope and Design in a way that ensures traceability, trackability, and usability for building, testing, and deployment.