I like pulling in the tools of logic to get to understand the real value proposition of a user story when thinking about product ownership
Mark McKee
Here are some thoughts that may be useful when talking to stakeholders and teams alike:
1) The truth values are either true or false
2) I need both the premise and conclusion to be true for the truth value of a feature/story to be true.
As an x I would like y, so I can achieve this outcome z
(i) Our hypothesis: As an X I would like y
(ii) Our conclusion: So I can achieve this outcome z
We could end up with a hypothesis that is false, or a conclusion that is false, giving us an overall false outcome (we verify this below with truth tables, a vital tool of logic)
We represent our story, having decomposed it simply as A and B (hypothesis and conclusion)
In formal sentential logic the connective between hypothesis and conclusion is a conjunction (‘and’, represented as the symbol ‘∧’)
A ∧ B
The truth table for conjunctions (something AND another thing) are below. Only when both A and B are true is the truth value true. All other combinations give us a false truth value. On the left are the possible T or F values of A and B and on the right are the truth values after evaluating both together
This helps me to determine more clearly what we are discussing with a stakeholder when we can simply break things down to make sure we are all agreed on the story: the essence of product owner excellence! Next we get to the acceptance criteria so we can determine if we are done!
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