User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development
ISBN:9780321205681 read summary

A 'must' for any product manager or product owner. There are many books out there, but if you only get one, let it be this one! Cuts to the chase, contains all that is necessary, with lots of helpful examples. Mike Cohn's 'Agile Estimating and Planning' is great too!

This book made me better after the first chapter, maybe even after the introduction. I come from a traditional background of "The system shall..." approach to system requirements and incorporated them into a more agile approach. I have designed and completed successful projects that included hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I can tell you, those requirements were like hitching a piano to a car and driving uphill.

I have started using the principles in this book along with other agile approaches to get started, successfully, down the road of agile software development. My teams are happier, my customers are happier, my boss is happier.

By following the practical guidelines, this book will put you on the path from the beginning.

For those that need a quick introduction into "Agile methodology" - this is the book to start with.
It details the basics of interviewing, clarifying and capturing users' requirements in a true agile fashion.
The book then proceeds with describing the necessary interaction between the development team and the users / users' representatives (expert domains). Great job in providing a succinct analysis of the differences between the User Stories methodology and the IEEE software specifications as well as the Use Case technique.
Excellent examples accompany the theory.
The only problem is that User Stories is only a part (albeit an important one) in the Agile Methodology. The writer realizes the need to provide the basic principles of Agile but this part feels like a half baked effort to grow the book into something bigger than initially planned.

I bought this book in order to prepare for a transition to agile on our development team. I found it a good mix of theoretical background for the agile processes but also having plenty of good, practical advice. Plus, it is written well.

This book does an excellent job explaining what stories are, how to use them, and how to deal with the nasty edge cases that may trip up any team trying to apply user stories to their own projects.