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Trying to transition from Ad-hoc coding to Scrum - what is in a fully refined user story?

Last post 05:57 am October 3, 2025 by Kristy Noble
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Kristy Noble
05:57 am October 3, 2025

I'm a BA/PO.  The majority of our devs have been doing ad-hoc coding:  talk to the user, code whatever they ask, repeat.  The pitfalls are obvious - unable to predict when the product will be releasable in any form, users using the dev team to "try out" design ideas, then discarding them which just wastes time and resources, etc.

I have been trying to convince devs that refined user stories for building a page in an application contain specific information about the fields on that page:  Whether the field is optional or required, can hold numbers only or text, max size, etc.  I also believe that for displayed fields, the story should say where the field is sourced from or how it is calculated.  I believe this info should be in the user story before we start coding - otherwise, how can anyone test it?  I'm not asking them to do the refining - I'm happy to do it myself or to work with them.

I get pushback that I'm just trying to make everyone do waterfall, and that I'm wasting time.  I don't think I am.  Am I crazy?  Am I wrong?  I've been looking for literature about refining user stories to see if anyone addresses this.  All I can find is information about running refinement meetings, when you should refine (2 days prior), putting stories in the correct order, etc.  Can anyone point me to some references or authoritative examples of fully refined and ready user stories?

Or at least reassure me that I'm on the right track?

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