I'm currently busy writing business rules and user stories for a project I'm on. For a few stories there should be default behaviours like the following.
The application handles orders for representatives. When a order is placed for a certain region, it should pick a default warehouse (some regions have their own warehouses).
I'm wondering how you can define these behaviours for user stories. Are these considered business rules?
I'm wondering how you can define these behaviours for user stories.
They're expectations of the user that you're making explicit.
Are these considered business rules?
Yes.
The tricky part is this.
Story 1: The order is handled manually and a user picks the warehouse. This is front-and-center of everyone's mind. They talk about this at length.
Story 2: The order is handled automatically and a warehouse is picked by the system. This is assumed. What more important is that there's no actual user interaction here. It just "happens" without an actor seeing it or interacting with it. Since there's no interaction, it's not a very good user story. It doesn't lead to a fancy screen and the normal artifacts that go along with a proper user story where a user has interaction with the system.
When "automatic" or "default" things happen, the user story becomes a kind of degenerate case where it seems like less work needs to be done because there's no screens or pages or forms or interaction.
However, when "automatic" or "default" things happen some user somewhere actually does care and actually does need to see that it did happen. Even if it happens in bulk. Somewhere else, there's a variation on user story 2.
Automatic or default behaviors often highlight the need for review or audit or overview stories to be sure the automatic stuff really happened correctly.