User Stories — Part 4: Pitfalls & Review

maang.io AI-Native Builder Series

What is this?

Imagine handing your dinner-party prep list to a chef you respect before service starts. They don't cook for you. They run a finger down the list and say: "This one's too big — 'make the main course' isn't a step, it's three. This one tells me how to chop before you've told me what you're making. And this one — why is it even on here? Who eats it?" In ten minutes they've caught the problems that would have wrecked your evening, and you fix them while it's cheap — on paper, not in the kitchen.

That's this chapter. You've built a real StreakUp backlog over Parts 1–3. Now we put on the mentor hat and review it the way a senior engineer reviews a junior's backlog — looking for the four mistakes that show up in every beginner's first set of stories, and giving you a checklist to catch them yourself. Fixing a bad story costs a sentence. Fixing it after you've built the wrong thing costs days.

The one-line idea: the cheapest place to fix a project is in the backlog — so review your stories for the four classic mistakes before a single line of code gets written.

The respected-chef-reading-your-prep-list image is the spirit here. Let's review.