Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve

  This new book by Gojko Adzic and David Evans is deceptively slim. It’s not just 50 ideas to improve your user stories. It’s 50 experiments you can try to improve how you deliver software. For each experiment, David and Gojko provide you with information and resources “to make it work”.

One chapter that has caught my eye is “Use Low-Tech for Story Conversations”. Gojko and David advise holding story discussions in rooms with lots of whiteboards and few big tables. When everyone sits at a big conference table, looking at stories on a monitor or projected on a wall, they start tuning out and reading their phones. Standing in front of a whiteboard or flip chart encourages conversation, and the ability to draw makes that conversation more clear. Participants can draw pictures, connect boxes with arrows, write sentences, make lists. It’s a great way to communicate.

I’ve always been fond of the “walking skeleton”, identifying the minimum stories that will deliver enough of a slice to get feedback and validate learning. Gojko and David take this idea even further, they put the walking skeleton on crutches. Deliver a user interface with as little as possible below the surface now, get feedback from users, and iterate to continually improve it. As with all the ideas in the book, the authors provide examples from their own experience to help you understand the concept well enough to try it out with your team.

David and Gojko understand you’re working in a real team, with corporate policies and constraints that govern what you can do. Each story idea ends with a practical “How to Make it Work” section so you can get your experiment started.

Again, it’s not just a book of tips for improving your user stories. It’s fifty ways to help your customers identify the business value they need, and deliver a thin slice of that value to get feedback and continue to build it to achieve business goals. It’s a catalog of proven practices that guides you in learning the ones you want to try.