Stephane Malhomme

This book is vivid, valuable, and very accessible. As an Agile BA/PM I always end up referring it. User story mapping is essential to have a "True North" goal in your SDLC. How getting a few relevant people in a room to move about a few post-its will 1- save you enormous time and $ 2- Ensure your releases are always coherent and value-delivering, whether it be for user/UX or monetisation/$ for the company kicking goals. BUT IT ALSO: a) It explains and illustrates how to use "user stories" at large, how they are meant to be conversational and evolutive, the opposite of a "requirement doc" sitting on a shared server to blindly deliver. b) It explains how Agile, brilliant and demanding as it might be in its true form, remains a (great) software engineering tool BUT IS NOT A DESIGN TOOL. It frames nicely the gap that good BA/PM's must bridge intelligently, between product design and technical delivery. c) It also illustrates how communication really works (see "Cake wrecks" or the holiday picture that only captures a tiny part of the narrative) and how comms breakdown can be catastrophically damaging. (It also makes multiple references to the importance of comms, as described by the best Agile experts) It is also a great reminder of basic but underrated principles in software development: That there is always too much code, that skillsets will differ between devs and designers, and so will their language, etc. The whole thing is written with passion and wit, with elegant vividness and simplicity, an absolute must-read.