Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories

by Gojko Adzic, David Evans

This book will help you write better user 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Programming, Software, Technology, Management, Computer Science

124 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2014

About the author

Gojko Adzic is a partner at Neuri Consulting LLP, winner of the 2016 European Software Testing Outstanding Achievement Award, and the 2011 Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Award. Gojko's book Specification by Example won the Jolt Award for the best book of 2012, and his blog won the UK Agile Award for the best online publication in 2010.

Gojko is a frequent keynote speaker at leading software development conferences and one of the authors of MindMup and Narakeet.

Reviews

[Sergey Shishkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In fact, this book contains more than fifty very good ideas, because every idea comes with a short anecdote highlighting its usefulness and context, as well as with practical guidance on how to put that idea in practice. It's densely packed with wisdom and will not only improve your user stories but iterative product development in general.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Title says it all - it's hard to expect this book to be a real breakthrough, but there's a serious chance you can get something useful out of its 50 ideas.

What I liked most?
* I totally agree with "Start with no outputs"
* There was surprisingly much value in "Tell stories, don't write them"
* I like the approach described in "Avoid using numeric story sizes", but whenever I was preaching it, there was always a massive resistance (you'd be surprised with roles of the ones that have resisted)

What about the rest?
Clearly not that revealing, but it doesn't break that overall impression.

One last sentence: Gojko is not recommending this book for less experienced people who just start the journey with user stories, but I wouldn't be that reluctant. You gotta know the basics, but significant experience is not really required.

[Mike Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good ideas in this book but a lot of the content does not actually have much to do with User Stories is more about the authors experience of previous projects they have consulted on. The last section of book just seems like they were trying to fill up pages with content.

[Zumrud Huseynova · Rating 5 out of 5]

...people who ask for control often really want visibility.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contained lot of new ideas for me. Some of them are context dependent, but many are wildly applicable. An overarching theme is that stories are a token for conversation. There are many ideas on how to improve the conversation, by focusing on collaboration, not trying to make everything fit a given format.

The third section, Discussing stories, contains a lot of ideas that are easy to put in practice. For example. we have tried diverge and merge in the team, and it proved to be a useful tool for getting the team on the same page. Also measuring alignment with feedback exercises helps actually measure shared understanding.

If you’re tackling big user stories, make sure to read the forth section. There are a bunch of good ideas on how to split stories, while making sure they still have business value. The examples in this section also helped a lot. The authors talk about building MindMup and some of the challenges they faced and how they split big or complex stories. I must admit I was surprised by how creative some of the solutions were. They definitely showed how to deliver business agility.

The ideas on managing iterative delivery are also interesting, but might be harder to put in practice. The authors talk against using numeric story sizes, velocity for capacity management and other very common practices in agile projects. The good thing that they do give alternatives that, although might be hard work at first, make a lot of sense.

If you're interested in a more detailed review, you can visit my blog.

[Jeff Dutra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. It definitely had some good and interesting ideas. This is a rare situation where I would recommend a book that I give a 3 out of 5.

Unfortunately the writing gets in the way. Writing well is not easy, but it is important when expressing ideas. I believe a great editor can help turn this book into a 4 instead of a 3 out of 5.

This book reminds of the quote from Stephen Wilbers  Mastering the Craft of Writing: How to Write With Clarity, Emphasis, and Style

"There’s not much to be said about the period, except that most writers don’t reach it soon enough."

[Nikolay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book - it consists of multiple interesting ideas regarding backlog management (BTW name '50 quick ideas to improve your Product Backlog' would better describe content of the book). This books is not for beginners and assume some experience working with backlog items (in any format).
It provides ideas for following activities:
* Creating stories
* Planning with stories
* Discussing stories
* Slitting stories
* Managing Iterative Delivery

All ideas accompany with examples from author's experience which makes this book quite practical.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does pretty much what it says on the tin and gives you 50 quick ideas to improve your user stories.

While the concept of user stories might be as old as the hills, a significantly large proportion of the ideas put forward are original and guide the best way of writing and delivering the content, through to the pitfalls of using story points to measure output.

The book is well structured and illustrated, which is becoming increasingly important as professional development books compete to be picked up, read and recommended.

[Robson Castilho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book with nice tips about improving user stories. It's not an intro book about the topic (so it's not about INVEST). Instead, it provides a great number of ideas about planning your releases, getting fast feedback and validating the outcomes with your users.
Definitely recommended for everyone who's having problems to identify, write and validate stories.

[Matteo Tomasulo · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's appeared to me, but this book was a little stringed out. Some ideas are absolutely good and inspiring but I think that some of them, as repetition of others or for verbosity, are just a way to pad the book.

[Evan Wondrasek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took my sweet time with this one, but it was worth it, as each chapter was independent and this stuff would be very easy to overwhelm yourself with if taken all at once. I was on board with about 90% of the recommendations, with the main exceptions being at the end. This book is much more than writing good user stories; some of the most valuable information was about sequencing and iterative breakdowns. I genuinely plan to reread this book on a regular basis.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is also a nice recap of many books about testing that I've read so far.

My personal learnings here are how to properly group, merge and split user stories and also some nice ideas like to actually name milestones, so people can actually feel like they've reached and archived something that isn't just another number on a dashboard.

Another idea I really have to look into is impact mapping.

[Olivier Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly great resource. The only minor downside I can find is that the negative potential trade-offs of some ideas are not always presented or discussed thoroughly. That is why I would not recommend it as a first book to novices in product management. I feel one can truly get the essence and avoid some pitfalls from the ideas after one has some personal work experience in product management. Armed with their own experience, one can truly make the ideas work in the right context.

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great go-to-book to get tips and tricks on certain areas. I love the structure of each small chapter, introducing the idea, explaining how it would work and what it entails but also where one can find out more on how to apply the idea. This book was a great inspiration when working on a delivery improvement process and will hopefully serve as a reference when encountering a specific challenge.

[Gábor L. Hajba · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on how to make user stories more effective. It summarizes best practices and common sense on the approach of planning and describing tasks to develop.

I will try these ideas as soon as I get to my next project where I am not just confronted with the stories to implement but with the features / epics which need to get smaller to fit into our head.

[Jorge · Rating 5 out of 5]

uno de los libros más importantes que he leído para llevar a los equipos a interactuar de corma colaborativa en la recolección de ideas para la generación de proyectos de cualquier índole, y en particular, proyectos de desarrollo de software.
Si necesitas sacar los equipos del "síndrome del excel proyectado", este es el libro que debes leer.

[Henry Suryawirawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides very practical and useful tips on how to do Agile software delivery and user stories creation. While working on a customer engagement recently, I made use some of the tips from the book and was able to drive a successful inception workshop that ended up with a better MVP scoping that everyone was more confident of.

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book

Its a good bock that explains in a practical way how to get better results from agility from the use of user stories. It explains very power tool and conceps that today very much companies should consider. For example the validation of outcome with real users, between a lot of other powerfull concepts.

[Miguel Ocaña · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro por el que voy a pasar de vez en cuando ya que dependiendo de la situación tendré más interés por determinadas recetas. En definitiva una fuente de ideas, hay cosas que no se me hubieran ocurrido nunca y a las que pienso dar oportunidades en cuanto vea la necesidad.

[Philippe Aubrée · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un livre indispensable pour les PO (et donc les POD, PO proxy...), les coachs agiles...
le format de clés sur 2 pages permet d'en lire petit morceau par petit morceau, mais peut faire prendre du temps.
Prenez des notes ;-)

[Guillem Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent compilation of ideas to help you refine your technique and solve some problems you have had at some point for sure. It’s a very easy to read book and a complete set of tips, very helpful and very recommended!

[Christophe Gesché · Rating 5 out of 5]

J'ai vraiment vraiment adoré l'approche rédactionnelle. La découpe par problématique.

C'est pour moi le premier que j'encourage à lire aux personnes de mon entourage qui utilisent les User Stories.

[jvickery88 · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a tester/QA engineer I benefitted from approximately 20% of this. This is probably more suited for an audience of those intending to be or currently in positions around Agile coaching, agile lead/product owner type of roles so my review probably isn’t fair in that context.

[Peter Brukner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is packed with practical, bite-sized tips to make your user stories clearer and more effective. Great for Agile teams who already know the basics and want to level up how they write, split, and manage stories.

[Nenad Vitorović · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good source of insights with a bunch real-world examples, and can be used as a reference/quick reminder/inspiration...

[Bart Du Bois · Rating 4 out of 5]

plenty of useful tips

[vijayan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book with collective information about the user stories from end to end analysis.

[Clumsygadabout · Rating 3 out of 5]

A handy book to keep at your desk to use in conversation with project team, especially if there are members who are new to user stories.

[Hania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicely written quick ideas how to improve user stories - creating stories, planning with stories, discussing stories, splitting stories, managing iterative delivery.

[Rémi Goyard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book, easy to read, easy to understand and big learning