User story

About: User story is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1078 publications have been published within this topic receiving 23717 citations.

Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams

Abstract: "The best thinking in the agile development community brought to street-level in the form of implementable strategy and tactics. Essential reading for anyone who shares the passion for creating quality software."-Eric Olafson, CEO Tomax"Crystal Clear is beyond agile. This book leads you from software process hell to successful software development by practical examples and useful samples."-Basaki Satoshi, Schlumberger"A very powerful message, delivered in a variety of ways to touch the motivation and understanding of many points of view."-Laurie Williams, Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University"A broad, rich understanding of small-team software development based on observations of what actually works."-John Rusk"A superb synthesis of underlying principles and a clear description of strategies and techniques."-Gery Derbier, Project Manager, Solistic"Alistair Cockburn shows how small teams can be highly effective at developing fit-for-purpose software by following a few basic software development practices and by creating proper team dynamics. These small teams can be much more effective and predictable than much larger teams that follow overly bureaucratic and prescriptive development processes."-Todd Little, Sr. Development Manager, Landmark Graphics"I find Cockburn's writings on agile methods enlightening: He describes 'how to do,' of course, but also how to tell whether you're doing it right, to reach into the feeling of the project. This particular book's value is that actual project experiences leading to and confirming the principles and practices are so...well...clearly presented."-Scott Duncan, ASQ Software Division Standards Chair and representative to the US SC7 TAG and IEEE S2ESC Executive Committee and Management Board and Chair of IEEE Working Group 1648 on agile methods"Crystal Clear identifies principles that work not only for software development, but also for any results-centric activities. Dr. Cockburn follows these principles with concrete, practical examples of how to apply the principles to real situations and roles and to resolve real issues."-Niel Nickolaisen, COO, Deseret Book"All the successful projects I've been involved with or have observed over the past 19 or so years have had many of the same characteristics as described in Crystal Clear (even the big projects). And many of the failed projects failed because they missed something-such as expert end-user involvement or accessibility throughout the project. The final story was a great read. Here was a project that in my opinion was an overwhelming success-high productivity, high quality, delivery, happy customer, and the fact that the team would do it again. The differing styles in each chapter kept it interesting. I started reading it and couldn't put it down, and by the end, I just had to say 'Wow!'"-Ron Holliday, Director, Fidelity Management ResearchCarefully 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 360i¾o, 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 projectPerhaps 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.© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Planning Extreme Programming

Abstract: From the Publisher: "XP is the most important movement in our field today I predict that it will be as essential to the present generation as the SEI and its Capability Maturity Model were to the last" —From the foreword by Tom DeMarco The hallmarks of Extreme Programming—constant integration and automated testing, frequent small releases that incorporate continual customer feedback, and a teamwork approach—make it an exceptionally flexible and effective approach to software development Once considered radical, Extreme Programming (XP) is rapidly becoming recognized as an approach particularly well-suited to small teams facing vague or rapidly changing requirements—that is, the majority of projects in today's fast-paced software development world Within this context of flexibility and rapid-fire changes, planning is critical; without it, software projects can quickly fall apart Written by acknowledged XP authorities Kent Beck and Martin Fowler, Planning Extreme Programming presents the approaches, methods, and advice you need to plan and track a successful Extreme Programming project The key XP philosophy: Planning is not a one-time event, but a constant process of reevaluation and course-correction throughout the lifecycle of the project You will learn how planning is essential to controlling workload, reducing programmer stress, increasing productivity, and keeping projects on track Planning Extreme Programming also focuses on the importance ofestimating the cost and time for each user story (requirement), determining its priority, and planning software releases accordingly Specific topics include: Planning and the four key variables: cost, quality, time, and scope Deciding how many features to incorporate into a release Estimating scope, time, and effort for user stories Prioritizing user stories Balancing the business value and technical risk of user stories Rebuilding the release plan based on customer and programmer input Choosing the iteration length Tracking an iteration What to do when you're not going to make the date Dealing with bugs Making changes to the team Outsourcing Working with business contracts In addition, this book alerts you to the red flags that signal serious problems: customers who won't make decisions, growing defect reports, failing daily builds, and more An entire chapter is devoted to war stories from the trenches that illustrate the real-world problems many programmers encounter and the solutions they've devised

Context of Use within usability activities

Abstract: Designing for usability involves establishing user requirements for a new system or product, developing design solutions, prototyping the system and the user interface, and testing it with representative users. However, before any usability design or evaluation activity can begin, it is necessary to understand the Context of Use for the product, i.e. the goals of the user community, and the main user, task and environmental characteristics of the situation in which it will be operated. This paper describes the background to, and importance of, understanding Context of Use, and presents a process for performing a context analysis. The method described is particularly aimed at non-experts in the area of user-centred design and evaluation.

Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research (Second Edition)

Abstract: As a whole, this book delivers what it sets out to deliver: a solid, comprehensive guide for practitioners of user research. The second edition has responded to the rapid pace of contemporary business by thoroughly revising chapters and adding new ones that reflect best practices in recent user research. In addition, the book comes with a website that extends the text's offerings to include reference materials, additional best practices and tools for user research, and items such as user consent forms and checklists. Quite possibly, this text and accompanying website might not be all that attractive to the specialist who has conducted years of advanced study into the user experience. To be fair, though, the authors of Observing the User Experience did not set out to write a manual for specialists. Their goal was to create a guide for those who are relatively new to user research or who find that their positions now require knowledge of user research. For this audience, Goodman, Kuniavsky, and Moed's book succeeds, and fulfilling the authors' prediction, these readers will likely pull this book from the shelf when they must observe the user experience.

The user–developer communication process: a critical case study

Abstract: .Although user participation in systems development is widely believed to have positive impacts on user acceptance, it does not guarantee success and there is still much that we do not know about how and why user participation sometimes delivers positive benefits, but not always. Much of the prior research on user participation assumes that user–developer communication will ensure that the resulting system will be designed to meet users’ needs and will be accepted by them. The nature and quality of the communication between users and developers, however, remains an understudied aspect of user participation. In this paper, we focus on the user–developer communication process. We propose a process model that delineates four stages of communication between users and software developers, and we argue that these stages must occur for user participation to lead to effective outcomes. To illustrate our model, we apply it to analyse a ‘critical case study’ of a software project that failed despite high levels of user involvement. We show that when ‘communication lapses’ occurred in several of the user–developer communication stages, developers failed to be informed regarding the underlying reasons that users avoided the system. Based on the insights from this case study, we advise researchers and practitioners how to leverage the potential benefits of user participation, rather than take them for granted.