User stories are a deceptively simple concept. Identifying a small bit of "software to build" as a user story seems easy enough, but agile teams everywhere struggle to really get the value out of them. User stories are simultaneously simple and sophisticated. They're full of paradox and contradiction. This talk is about that. In this talk you'll see how user stories were built for conversation and how those conversations affect the details we write down. You'll learn why requiring more details in your stories don't help them get better. You'll learn how stories both shrink in size and grow in detail over time. You'll learn how stories can be "done" without software being finished. And finally, you'll learn how stories need to both be independent, and part of holistic story map describing your product. You'll leave with a deep understanding of why user stories are one of the best inventions of the agile community and how you can use them more effectively on your agile project. Conference: 2013.agileindia.org Slide and Other details: betterconf.com/agileindia2013/index.html#session-42-info