User Stories Applied

07/19/2011 · No Responses

The concept of user stories has its roots as one of the main tenets of Extreme Programming. In simple terms, user stories represent an effective means of gathering requirements from the customer (roughly akin to use cases). This book describes user stories and demonstrates how they can be used to properly plan, manage, and test software development projects. The book highlights both successful and unsuccessful implementations of the concept, and provides sets of questions and exercises that drive home its main points. After absorbing the lessons in this book, readers will be able to introduce user stories in their organizations as an effective means of determining precisely what is required of a software application.

From the Back Cover
Agile requirements: discovering what your users really want. With this book, you will learn to:

Flexible, quick and practical requirements that work
Save time and develop better software that meets users’ needs
Gathering user stories — even when you can’t talk to users
How user stories work, and how they differ from use cases, scenarios, and traditional requirements
Leveraging user stories as part of planning, scheduling, estimating, and testing
Ideal for Extreme Programming, Scrum, or any other agile methodology

Thoroughly reviewed and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, User Stories Applied offers a requirements process that saves time, eliminates rework, and leads directly to better software.

The best way to build software that meets users’ needs is to begin with “user stories”: simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users. In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle.

You’ll learn what makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. You’ll discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can’t speak with your users. Then, once you’ve compiled your user stories, Cohn shows how to organize them, prioritize them, and use them for planning, management, and testing.

User role modeling: understanding what users have in common, and where they differ
Gathering stories: user interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops
Working with managers, trainers, salespeople and other “proxies”
Writing user stories for acceptance testing
Using stories to prioritize, set schedules, and estimate release costs
Includes end-of-chapter practice questions and exercises