The concept of writing user stories, as a way of documenting requirements, was introduced and popularized with Extreme Programming, and then picked up by Scrum and several other agile methods. Nowadays, for many agile developers, a project without user stories would be like a world without pizza. Impossible to imagine.

User Stories Applied
The book User Stories Applied, published in 2004 by Mike Cohn, is a landmark publication that has brought together everything the agile movement has learned about this important subject. Mike's book deals with all the activities that people have to perform when writing user stories, like techniques for requirements gathering, defining roles, working with user proxies, and preparing for acceptance testing. Mike also clearly explains how user stories can play a pivotal role in the wider agile project management processes of estimating, planning and monitoring.

Jurgen! What's your opinion on Scrum books?

For many agile practitioners, particularly the ScrumMasters among us, books by Ken Schwaber are a must-read. I can explain, using a wide range of both original and lame excuses, why I still hadn't read Agile Project Management with Scrum. But I won't. Let me just tell you how this book compares to all those other agile books out there. There are plenty of alternatives to choose from (by Cockburn, Highsmith, Anderson, Coplien, Poppendieck, Larman, Beck, Fowler, to name just a few...) so it's interesting to see what Ken's unique contribution is to this crowded field...

1. The book is very rich in case studies, and I think this is the best reason for reading it: there's a lot we can learn from real-life examples. Theory is always important, of course. But sometimes it's even more important to see where theory has failed in practice, and how Ken has managed to solve some problems in ways you won't find in the standard Scrum process descriptions.

I have finished reading Agile Management for Software Engineering, a book by David J. Anderson, and I am very impressed. Granted, the book is already four years old (I'm a little behind with my reading) but it's still relevant. It is the first book I've read that tries to back up the agile approach with solid theory. In this book David uses the Theory of Constraints to explain why lean/agile project life cycles lead to success, and a higher return on investment (ROI), more often than traditional life cycles. He also presents an interesting in-depth analysis of Scrum vs. XP vs. FDD.

However, since I am Dutch, you can usually expect me to have found something to complain about (or disagree with). And, being the considerate person that I am, I would never try to disappoint you. So, here are my three gripes: