Should i write similar user stories for multiple roles?

Question

We have a story which seems to be similar for two of our user roles.

There is an external and an internal salesman identified as different roles.

They both can capture data in a survey. But the external salesman (and only she) is able to add new survey sources (e.g. shops) but only while creating new surveys. The internal salesman has to add new survey sources in another system which will be imported overnight. It shall be impossible to add new survey sources without a survey.

So far we have this story:

As a salesman i can create a survey so that the survey source can be benchmarked.

And these scenarios:

Scenario: Survey created by internal salesman    
Given an internal salesman
and a choosen shop as survey source
when a survey is created
then the survey source is benchmarked.

Scenario: Survey created for new survey source by external salesman
Given an external salesman
and a new shop as survey source
when a survey is created
then the survey source is added 
and the survey source is benchmarked.

I'm in doubt that this should be the end for the requirement. First of all there is no explicit role "salesman" defined. But we use it in the story. And the constraint that new survey sources can only be created by external salesman isn't made explicit.

Should we rephrase or split the story? Is it sufficient to put the "add new survey source" in the scenarios?

Answer 1

Before you start writing the story, perhaps we should go back a few steps. Ideally, your requirements analysis should start with a preliminary list of roles (or better yet personas) to describe who the system actors are and precisely what they want to do with the system. So in your model, the internal and external salesman sound like different personas because their interactions and what they want from the system are different.

Once you have a personas identified, then it's best to sketch out a simple domain or context diagram to show how the personas and external systems interact with the system you are building. ( http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/initialRequirementsModeling.htm)

From what you describe, it sounds like you should have a diagram that shows the 2 different sales personas and the survey source system with arrows describing how those elements interact with the main system. The fact that the external sales persona alone can add survey sources directly should be very clear on the context diagram. And since their interaction will look different than the internal sales persona, you'll know that you in fact have two different user stories.