Requirements are based on a user story, which is an informal, natural language description of one or more features of a software system. User stories are often written from the perspective of an end user or user of a system. Depending on the community, user stories may be written by various stakeholders including clients, users, managers or development team members. They facilitate sensemaking and communication, that is, they help software teams organize their understanding of the system and its context. Please do not confuse user story with system requirements. A user story is an informal description of a feature; a requirement is a formal description of need (See section later).

User stories may follow one of several formats or templates. The most common would be:

"As a <role>, I want <capability> so that <receive benefit>"

"In order to <receive benefit> as a <role>, I want <goal/desire>"

"As <persona>, I want <what?> so that <why?>" where a persona is a fictional stakeholder (e.g. user). A persona may include a name, picture; characteristics, behaviours, attitudes, and a goal which the product should help them achieve.

Example:

“As provider of the Climate gateway I want to empower researchers from academia to interact with datasets stored in the Climate Catalogue, and bring their own applications to analyse this data on remote cloud servers offered via EGI.”