User Stories Applied

Author: Mike Cohn
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 0132702649
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
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 User Stories Applied will be invaluable to every software developer, tester, analyst, and manager working with any agile method: XP, Scrum... or even your own home-grown approach.

Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories

Author: Gojko Adzic
Publisher: Neuri Consulting Llp
ISBN: 9780993088100
Category : Agile software development
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This book will help you write better stories, spot and fix common issues, split stories so that they are smaller but still valuable, and deal with difficult stuff like crosscutting concerns, long-term effects and non-functional requirements. Above all, this book will help you achieve the promise of agile and iterative delivery: to ensure that the right stuff gets delivered through productive discussions between delivery team members and business stakeholders. Who is this book for? This is a book for anyone working in an iterative delivery environment, doing planning with user stories. The ideas in this book are useful both to people relatively new to user stories and those who have been working with them for years. People who work in software delivery, regardless of their role, will find plenty of tips for engaging stakeholders better and structuring iterative plans more effectively. Business stakeholders working with software teams will discover how to provide better information to their delivery groups, how to set better priorities and how to outrun the competition by achieving more with less software. What's inside? Unsurprisingly, the book contains exactly fifty ideas. They are grouped into five major parts: - Creating stories: This part deals with capturing information about stories before they get accepted into the delivery pipeline. You'll find ideas about what kind of information to note down on story cards and how to quickly spot potential problems. - Planning with stories: This part contains ideas that will help you manage the big-picture view, set milestones and organise long-term work. - Discussing stories: User stories are all about effective conversations, and this part contains ideas to improve discussions between delivery teams and business stakeholders. You'll find out how to discover hidden assumptions and how to facilitate effective conversations to ensure shared understanding. - Splitting stories: The ideas in this part will help you deal with large and difficult stories, offering several strategies for dividing them into smaller chunks that will help you learn fast and deliver value quickly. - Managing iterative delivery: This part contains ideas that will help you work with user stories in the short and mid term, manage capacity, prioritise and reduce scope to achieve the most with the least software. About the authors: Gojko Adzic is a strategic software delivery consultant who works with ambitious teams to improve the quality of their software products and processes. Gojko's book Specification by Example was awarded the #2 spot on the top 100 agile books for 2012 and won the Jolt Award for the best book of 2012. In 2011, he was voted by peers as the most influential agile testing professional, and his blog won the UK agile award for the best online publication in 2010. David Evans is a consultant, coach and trainer specialising in the field of Agile Quality. David helps organisations with strategic process improvement and coaches teams on effective agile practice. He is regularly in demand as a conference speaker and has had several articles published in international journals.

Succeeding with Agile

Author: Mike Cohn
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0321579364
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 504

Book Description
Proven, 100% Practical Guidance for Making Scrum and Agile Work in Any Organization This is the definitive, realistic, actionable guide to starting fast with Scrum and agile-and then succeeding over the long haul. Leading agile consultant and practitioner Mike Cohn presents detailed recommendations, powerful tips, and real-world case studies drawn from his unparalleled experience helping hundreds of software organizations make Scrum and agile work. Succeeding with Agile is for pragmatic software professionals who want real answers to the most difficult challenges they face in implementing Scrum. Cohn covers every facet of the transition: getting started, helping individuals transition to new roles, structuring teams, scaling up, working with a distributed team, and finally, implementing effective metrics and continuous improvement. Throughout, Cohn presents "Things to Try Now" sections based on his most successful advice. Complementary "Objection" sections reproduce typical conversations with those resisting change and offer practical guidance for addressing their concerns. Coverage includes Practical ways to get started immediately-and "get good" fast Overcoming individual resistance to the changes Scrum requires Staffing Scrum projects and building effective teams Establishing "improvement communities" of people who are passionate about driving change Choosing which agile technical practices to use or experiment with Leading self-organizing teams Making the most of Scrum sprints, planning, and quality techniques Scaling Scrum to distributed, multiteam projects Using Scrum on projects with complex sequential processes or challenging compliance and governance requirements Understanding Scrum's impact on HR, facilities, and project management Whether you've completed a few sprints or multiple agile projects and whatever your role-manager, developer, coach, ScrumMaster, product owner, analyst, team lead, or project lead-this book will help you succeed with your very next project. Then, it will help you go much further: It will help you transform your entire development organization.

User Story Mapping

Author: Jeff Patton
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491904887
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
User story mapping is a valuable tool for software development, once you understand why and how to use it. This insightful book examines how this often misunderstood technique can help your team stay focused on users and their needs without getting lost in the enthusiasm for individual product features. Author Jeff Patton shows you how changeable story maps enable your team to hold better conversations about the project throughout the development process. Your team will learn to come away with a shared understanding of what you’re attempting to build and why. Get a high-level view of story mapping, with an exercise to learn key concepts quickly Understand how stories really work, and how they come to life in Agile and Lean projects Dive into a story’s lifecycle, starting with opportunities and moving deeper into discovery Prepare your stories, pay attention while they’re built, and learn from those you convert to working software

Xanpan: Team Centric Agile Software Development

Author: allan kelly
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1291852735
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
Xanpan is... a cross between XP and Kanban... is an example of a roll-your-own method... is distilled from Allan Kelly's own experiences running development teams and then helping multiple teams adopt Agile working methods and practices. Xanpan draws ideas from Kanban and Lean, XP and Scrum, product management and business analysis, and many other places. Allan tells the Xanpan story through a series of boards which tell the story of different teams. In between he fills in the principles, practices and thinking which together constitutes Xanpan. Each printed copy contains a code entitling the buyer to a free copy of the electronic version and subsequent updates.

Agile Estimating and Planning

Author: Mike Cohn
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132703106
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Book Description
Agile Estimating and Planning is the definitive, practical guide to estimating and planning agile projects. In this book, Agile Alliance cofounder Mike Cohn discusses the philosophy of agile estimating and planning and shows you exactly how to get the job done, with real-world examples and case studies. Concepts are clearly illustrated and readers are guided, step by step, toward how to answer the following questions: What will we build? How big will it be? When must it be done? How much can I really complete by then? You will first learn what makes a good plan-and then what makes it agile. Using the techniques in Agile Estimating and Planning, you can stay agile from start to finish, saving time, conserving resources, and accomplishing more. Highlights include: Why conventional prescriptive planning fails and why agile planning works How to estimate feature size using story points and ideal days–and when to use each How and when to re-estimate How to prioritize features using both financial and nonfinancial approaches How to split large features into smaller, more manageable ones How to plan iterations and predict your team's initial rate of progress How to schedule projects that have unusually high uncertainty or schedule-related risk How to estimate projects that will be worked on by multiple teams Agile Estimating and Planning supports any agile, semiagile, or iterative process, including Scrum, XP, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development, DSDM, Unified Process, and many more. It will be an indispensable resource for every development manager, team leader, and team member.

The Art of Agile Development

Author: James Shore
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 0596527675
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
For those considering Extreme Programming, this book provides no-nonsense advice on agile planning, development, delivery, and management taken from the authors' many years of experience. While plenty of books address the what and why of agile development, very few offer the information users can apply directly.

Crystal Clear

Author: Alistair Paul Becker
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132702495
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Book Description
Carefully researched over ten years and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams is a lucid and practical introduction to running a successful agile project in your organization. Each chapter illuminates a different important aspect of orchestrating agile projects. Highlights include Attention to the essential human and communication aspects of successful projects Case studies, examples, principles, strategies, techniques, and guiding properties Samples of work products from real-world projects instead of blank templates and toy problems Top strategies used by software teams that excel in delivering quality code in a timely fashion Detailed introduction to emerging best-practice techniques, such as Blitz Planning, Project 360o, and the essential Reflection Workshop Question-and-answer with the author about how he arrived at these recommendations, including where they fit with CMMI, ISO, RUP, XP, and other methodologies A detailed case study, including an ISO auditor's analysis of the project Perhaps the most important contribution this book offers is the Seven Properties of Successful Projects. The author has studied successful agile projects and identified common traits they share. These properties lead your project to success; conversely, their absence endangers your project.

Lean Architecture

Author: James O. Coplien
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470970138
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Book Description
More and more Agile projects are seeking architectural roots as they struggle with complexity and scale - and they're seeking lightweight ways to do it Still seeking? In this book the authors help you to find your own path Taking cues from Lean development, they can help steer your project toward practices with longstanding track records Up-front architecture? Sure. You can deliver an architecture as code that compiles and that concretely guides development without bogging it down in a mass of documents and guesses about the implementation Documentation? Even a whiteboard diagram, or a CRC card, is documentation: the goal isn't to avoid documentation, but to document just the right things in just the right amount Process? This all works within the frameworks of Scrum, XP, and other Agile approaches

The Art of Agile Product Ownership

Author: Allan Kelly
Publisher: Apress
ISBN: 1484251687
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
Every product owner faces a complex and unique set of challenges within their team. This provides each individual the opportunity to fill the role with different ambitions, skills, and insights. Your product ownership journey can take a variety of paths, and The Art of Agile Product Ownership is here to be your guide. Author Allan Kelly, who delivers Agile training courses to major companies, pulls from his experience to help you discover what it takes to be a successful product owner. You will learn how you need to define your role within a team and how you can best incorporate ownership with strategy. With the Agile method, time is the key factor, and after using the lessons from this book you will confidently be able to synthesize features, functionality, and scope against delivery. You will find out how other team members such as the UX designer and business analyst can support and enhance your role as product owner, and how every type of company structure can adapt for optimal agility. The Art of Agile Product Ownership is a beacon for current product owners, programmers who are ready to take the next step towards ownership, and analysts transitioning into the product space. This book helps you determine for yourself the best way to fill the product owner role so that you utilize your unique combination of skills. Product ownership is central to a successful Agile team, and after reading this book, you will be more than ready for the challenge. What You Will LearnExplores activities the product owner needs to do in order to write good and valuable user storiesIdentifies skills product owners can learn from product managers and business analystsDemonstrates how to make decisions based on business and customer demand rather than technical needs and feasibility Who This Book Is ForThis is a book for anyone becoming a product owner: developers and programmers, who, after some years at the code-face, are ready to step up to the next stage to own the product that they have been coding. Business Analysts and Product Managers who see themselves transitioning into the a product owner role will find value in this book in understanding their new role and how the work is the same and how it is different