A Little Book about Requirements and User Stories: Heuristics for Requirements in an Agile World

"I'd highly recommend this book for those who are starting an agile or lean transformation, so as to avoid bad starts and the related frustration." Amazon Review - DLed

"The information is very useful and well explained. It is just what pretends to be - gives full understanding on the topic. I recommend. It is not the deepest and detailed book for user stories, but gives plenty of important information. For starters in working in typical agile process environment is must have." Amazon Review - Steff

"I love the way Allan can explain complex stuff in simple ways and giving examples. I have took some important intention here that I can apply right away. Love it" Amazon Review - Wilson Govindji

"How do I make my user stories smaller?"

"What is the right size for a user story?"

"What is the difference between an Epic and a Story? And where do Tasks and Sub-tasks fit in?"

"Who writes user stories?"

"Why user stories?"

"Do I have to use User Stories?"

Allan Kelly found himself answering these questions, and similar ones, again and again so… he sat down to write the answers and this book was born.

In this book Allan discusses the role of user stories: they are not requirements, they are tokens for work to be done and a placeholder for a conversation. He gives his two golden rules: stories must be small and they must be beneficial to the business - further he describes what beneficial is, how to put a value on a story and how to maximise the return on investment.

He gives particular attention to the difference between requirements and specification and how these ideas line up with user stories and acceptance criteria. Along the way he takes epics, tasks, definition of done, backlog structuring, acceptance tests and much else.

In short, its little book about user stories and all that goes with them.

Having used user stories in daily work for a couple of years, I must say, had I read this book earlier, hours of futile discussions and weeks of failed attempts to get user stories and the process around them right.

The book touches upon many common pitfalls in communication that might undermine the overall success of the team. Every important aspect of software development is tackled, based on perceivable experience of the author.