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

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.