Highly Recommended
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This book is one of the most readable, compact, interesting, and well-written technical books that I've read in a long time. You can easily take it with you, which is a nice change compared to many books out there. The author's writing style is very clear. The layout is professional. The content is high quality. Being a developer who hasn't had the chance to work on a "true" agile project, I can recommend this to others who are just trying to find out what user stories are all about. The chapter comparing user stories to other requirements gathering techniques and the one on reasons to use user stories are particularly valuable. There is also great information about estimation and acceptance testing.
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Sensible Requirements Analysis - Help is Here
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How hard can it be to write Stories? The answer seems to be both "pretty simple" and "kind of tricky". Writing short sentences is a skill many of us have mastered by now, but working with people is the challenging part of any job. How many projects have delivered exactly what the Customer *specified*, but not quite what they need? Mike teaches us to keep our Stories simple enough that the team can really communicate with the Customer, responding to the complexities they express as a project progresses. The book is practical and addresses not just the practice of User Stories, but also how to plan for their use and manage them within different kinds of projects. It includes an introduction to Agile approaches like Extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum, but does not presume that all teams must work in this manner. Cohn's writing style is crystal clear. The layout of the book is superb, and the material is well developed to make the most of this structure, with short sections clearly titled. While readable as a training manual, the detailed table of contents also makes it valuable as a reference book. For Agile teams, this book provides a condensation of valuable experience, and practical advice. And if your team is stuck in analysis paralysis, spinning to refine and refine requirements, this book may provide the "aha" you are looking for.
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A must-have for those new to XP!
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I was once part of a new XP project where the users were very confused as to how to write a user story, having written nothing but detailed requirements their entire lives. The developers, also new to XP, didn't completely comprehend that they were to actually work with and talk to the users to elicit further details. Oh, if only I had had this book then! I would have purchased a copy for every user and every developer! There is a huge mental shift that has to take place when embracing agile methodologies, and Mike Cohn's book is an excellent catalyst for that change, making it a less painful transformation for those players involved. Cohn even spells out each group's responsibilities at the end of every chapter -- there's no ambiguity around who's supposed to do what. There are lots of examples that are easily understood, and the layout provides you with the information you and your team need in a logical sequence. Chapter 4 has a fabulous section called "Story Writing Workshop" that again provides that step-by-step hand-holding that first-timers need. I highly recommend this book. It's an excellent primer on the process of defining requirements in an agile environment.
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Agile Requirements Management Demystified
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Finally a book that demystifies Agile Requirements Management. In particular demystifying myths about User Stories themselves. The book puts together ideas from other books on the subject : Writing Effective Use Cases and Requirements by Collaboration :
Workshop for defining needs. This book not only explains properly the concepts but gives you practical advice on how you could use user stories on your projects. I particularly liked the chapter : Using Stories with Scrum. Reading this book was truly an enjoyable and learning experience.
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Mike is right - user communication is everything
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Having worked with SW development for more than 20 years, I have finally realised, that face to face, collaborative communication between users and developers in an open atmosphere is the first important step on your way to successfull projects.
Many books covers this briefly in a chapter or two, but with this book, you get a complete manual with techniques, that will be usefull to you in your collaboration with the users.
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