Dave Gardner
- dave@mpdconsulting.co.uk
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User Stories Applied
Mike Cohn
User Stories Applied is the second Mike Cohn book on Agile development I have read (in addition to Agile Estimating and Planning) and is another incredibly useful resource. It’s a book that explains the basics, drives home the key advantages of the approach and answers all the tricky questions your colleagues or boss will ask when you are attempting to introduce an Agile process to an organisation.
One of the major things I had trouble getting to grips with was the idea of writing stories. Instead of writing stories, I would find myself writing requirements. User Stories Applied, as the name suggests, tackles stories and story-writing head-on. It gives advice on how to go about collecting stories; the fishing analogy, “trawling” for stories is a good one. There is an entire chapter devoted to “story smells” that can help to identify bad stories and rework them into good ones. It also explains how to deal with tricky situations such as handling non-functional requirements (performance, accuracy, portability, security etc..)
As a <type of user>, I want <capability> so that <business value>.”
Moving on from stories, Mike explains how the Agile process works, including advice on estimating, planning and executing iterations. Through the use of real-world examples (the book revisits the “BigMoneyJobs” example throughout), the advantages of the approach are really explained in a manner that makes them seem obvious; advantages such as team work and valuing conversations over long documents.
The style of the book makes it an easy read; the chapters are well divided, suitably concise and the summary, questions and answers that end each chapter really help to ensure you have taken away the key learnings from each chapter.
Highly recommended for anyone looking to introduce an Agile approach to development within an organisation.
