The Three C's

Basic

difficulty

Stage 2

Agile IQ® Level

Backlog Items

Practices

Agile

Framework

Introduction

The Three Cs – “Card, Conversation, Confirmation” – is one method of writing and formatting Product Backlog items.

This formula by Ron Jeffries [1] captures the components of a well-formed Product Backlog item or User Story.

Card

A “Card” (or often a Post-It note): a physical token giving tangible and durable form to what would otherwise only be an abstraction.

If the Product Backlog item fits on a single index card then it can probably reach Done by the end of a single Sprint.

Conversation

A “conversation” taking place at different time and places during a project between the various people concerned by a given feature of a software product: customers, users, developers, testers; this conversation is largely verbal but most often supplemented by documentation.

The conversation addresses questions like:

What is needed?
Why is it valued?
Who is it valuable for?
When is it needed?
How will we deliver the work to the Definition of Done?
How big is the work and will it fit in a Sprint in its current state (or do we need to slice it into smaller pieces so it does fit in the Sprint)?

Confirmation

The “confirmation”: consensus by the team that the objectives and the scope of the User Story is understood.

After confirmation the team has a solid understanding what exactly we have to do for successfully completing the item.
The team will organise the work step by step sequentially one after another from beginning to end.
Each Product Backlog item will likely have some acceptance criteria
If the Product Backlog item meets all those criteria the team will not need to do any further work on it.

References

1. 2001: the Card, Conversation, Confirmation model was proposed by Ron Jeffries to distinguish “social” User Stories from “documentary” requirements practices such as Use Cases.