prioritization of tasks: who is the audience? Answer: me in the role of a user

Published 2020-04-30T14:44:00.001Z by Physics Derivation Graph

The Physics Derivation Graph has a backlog of tasks, including bugs and feature requests.
Having an objective would facilitate prioritization of the tasks.

I grappled with two candidate objectives:

The Physics Derivation Graph is a vanity project. I am the sole user and I don't expect any other users for the project
The Physics Derivation Graph is intended for use by other contributors.

These two objectives lead to different prioritizations. For example, resolving the login capability is vital for the second objective and not for the first. In the first objective, I would be better off just running a local Docker image and posting static content to the website.

I realized I could unify these two objectives as

I want to use the Physics Derivation Graph website as a "typical" user.

I don't care whether there are other users at this point, but I do want to use the website as though I were a user.

This objective is written as a story in which value is provided to the user. Here I am the user and the value is documenting derivations on the web.