Grab User Story Mapping: Discover The Whole Story, Build The Right Product Constructed By Jeff Patton Digital

and up to the point

Lots of examples, practical insights, it is clear the author spent a lot of time working on a software at different roles.
It is written in a very friendly tone, just like you're having a conversation with a more experienced colleague.
I've already tried several ideas from the book at work and plan to grab more of them.
Great book, with issues.
In general, the content is great, The knowledge that's getting passed to the readers is well served amp valuable, The content is well illustrated amp clear, But all of that gets really annoying, because the book is just too wordy, Quite quickly I got the impression and I couldn't get rid of it until the end that I'm reading the same stuff again even if it's smart amp applicable, it gets annoying.


What are my favourite parts / chapters
about how requirements are supposed to be formed "They are the requirements"
about "accurate estimates" :
about the value of working software "Validated learning over working software" Kent Beck
about clientvendor as an antipattern

And the thing that entertained me near the end of the book: "Stories are actually like asteroids" actually I think it's a great comparison D

In general, it's a good read and I'm happy that I went through, but it's a shame that it was a bit boring.
I would recommend this book to product managers, Senior Developers, engineering managers, and their coaches,

This book narrows in on user stories and connects to the process around them,
It is not about how stories shall be written, But how to use them, what's the purpose and how to make the most of them,

A couple of key points
It's not about what's written on them it's about the context they provide.

"Stories are Actually Like Asteroids" Ie breaks them down into smaller stories but not all at once.

It is all about the user and discovering what is needed,
I was hesitant to give this bookstars, because I found the title somewhat misleading, While it does introduce USM, I found those parts lacked dept, The bulk of the book is more about doing User Stories well, and not directly about USM itself.
It's rather repetitive in some parts, and the Kindle version had some parts where the font choices were awkward.


However, it's still a really good book on User Stories, Agile development, and Lean Startup mentality.
If I had started reading this book with those expectations, I'd probably been less disappointed by it.
A mustread for any Product Manager or facilitator or anyone involved in delivering a product, Apesar de a estrutura do livro ser muito confusa o que quase me fez desistir de lêlo, o conteúdo é um excelente guia sobre gestão de produtos em um ambiente de desenvolvimento ágil de software.
Vai muito além do story mapping em si e explora toda a cadeia de valor de um produto, abordando conceitos como processos e ferramentas de discovery, escrita de histórias, priorização, refinamento, lean e design thinking, aplicados ao fluxo de desenvolvimento ágil de software.
Os principais pontos negativos são a estrutura confusa dos capítulos e que o autor se repete muito o livro poderia terpáginas e seria bom da mesma forma.
I have rarely read a book that explains a concept this well, The theories are all brought to life with relevant case studies, brilliant analogies, and a writing style that reveals the author's passion for delivering software that solves a real problem.
Great book with a lot of great quotes/tid bits, Perhaps a little more focused on Product Discovery

and Lean Startup type concepts than the title might suggest, the first few chapters did provide valuable insights on how to do storymapping itself.
It's the kind of book that will deliver different nuggets every time you read it, depending on where you are in your Agile learning journey.
Can highly recommend to anyone having had bad experience with user stories I sure have, This book should clear up what probably went wrong, and how to use stories better, Spoiler: it's all about people talking about stories, not just writing, and passing them along, It's great stuff, Jeff is talking about but the style of writing is much more important to me.
Jeff is also extraordinary here because he "eats is own dog food", he speaks about story telling while using stories.
: Thats great. In the second part of the book, the story telling went in the background a little bit but it comes back closer to the end of the book.
I also like his humor, on how he is interacting with the reader, It could be a bit more from time to time,

It's highly recommended if you need to visualize a part of a product or a whole product.
This book isn't simply about a Mapping technique for Stories, It goes a lot beyond that, and it goes beyond because what matters most is not the Map itself but the work you do while you build such thing, the Map is just a supporting tool that helps you and the team visualize the big picture.
In this book you'll have a better and more clear understanding on how Stories can help us drive software development.
You'll learn and see literally, through nice illustrations by the author and pics how Agile development feels like and tips for better planning and collaboration.


Sometimes you might feel that you're reading things over but that's because the author didn't want to simply give you the requirements, he wanted to tell you the stories, thus building a good understanding and sense of it.
Good advice but delivery is poor, Lots of repetition that inflates page count Simply the book that got me a product manager job at a top tech company.


You should get this book if you're an entrepreneur or business person with no tech background and wonder:

How much should I know about software to work with technology
How the heck do I translate my product vision, business model or strategy into working software
What does a tech/product team look like
What other books might I read to go deeper

A brilliant journey awaits you at the other side.
Wish I had read thisyears ago, I knew this book is going to be really good when I read "Read this first", which is positioned before Chapter.
Here, Jeff Patton discusses the nature of documents and does so simply by telling a story about vacation photos to make a point.
Brilliant.

The author tells stories, and he does it so well, that I have a feeling that I now mostly need practice to effectively recognise opportunities whilst developing a product.
This book would have been really useful when I was learning to develop software by working on hobby projects.
But perhaps that time made it possible for me to really appreciate the message of the book.


Thanks to this book, I now see how great the old computer game "Asteroids" is.
Yes, that probably sounds nonsensical to you now, but I suspect you'll adopt the same opinion after reading this book.
I can understand the criticism with the high number of pages, certainly fewer trees could have been felled for this book.
Nevertheless, I think it's good that the content goes beyond the pure method and that it doesnt remain unmentioned where the individual ideas originate from.
User Story Mapping itself is a very interesting method and for me it forms the pivot between interviews and personae on the one side and usability tests on the other.
A lot of thoughts can also be found in Lean Startup which is not surprising when they write about "our friend Jeff Patton" there.

I find that the relaxed style of writing is very refreshing and see no reason why you can't smile when reading about business.
A very necessary reference for the design and development of digital products in these times, I personally use it as a map and guide in relation to the big picture.


It is worth paying attention to the details that the author talks about in each chapter.


Finally, I have loved the approach focused on the end user, which the author clarifies and that should be there every time you want to iterate and/or prioritize the outcomes we want to obtain with the launch of functionalities to the market in a product.
Good Agile book in general, Both in sense of principles and practices, There are some cool insights on how Brazillian Company Globo, com does product discovery. Also, the book focuses on building SHARED UNDERSTANDING via discovery and agile development, Great book with lots of useful information, I will surely give all the ideas a try in a future project,

However, as going through the book, I felt that some of the notes I was taking started to repeat themselves.
User story mapping is great, but this book used three times as many pages as necessary to explain it.
I was also dying to see one large legible illustrated example, not tons of tiny grainy photos.
Another professional development book on my reading list for a good few months finally finished, and I mean 'finally'.


With the average rating being,stars, I was expecting big things, However, instead, I felt it was more of a mixed bag hence my middle of the road star award.


The good points are several new innovative ideas that can be implemented, and the User Story Mapping's layout is intuitive.


However, the jokey nature in which it is written started to get on my nerves quickly as it was neither funny nor conducive to understanding the point being made.


For this reason, picking it back up wasn't always something I wanted to do, and I felt like finishing it was a bit of a slog.
sitelinkRead review on my blog

Value for money
/

Year, Price, Pages, Cover design
by OReilly Media Euro,pagespages with Acknowledgments, References, Index, About the Author, Paperback

Cover design by Ellie Volckhausen, Illustration by Rebecca Demarest, Interior design by David Futato.
Good paper quality and reading experience

sentences about the book
Rethink your expectations of this book: it is not a manual on “how to write user story”, but a broad compendium of knowledge about software product management

It is not onetime reading, but a handbook you reach for again and again to remind yourself of the basic principles

If you have prejudices against OReilly publisher, then this book is an opportunity to get rid of them
The narrator guides you with special care.
He is whispering secrets to your ear and he is telling funny stories from everyday life, By the very end, you have a feeling that youve known Jeff Patton for a very long time.
You may want to invite him for drinks and discuss some parts of the book, The narrators voice reminds me of a character in Ridley Scotts movie A Good Year, His name is Henry Skinner and hes an uncle of our protagonist

A unique book, an extraordinary book in the best sense of the word

What did I learn
I understand better what user story mapping is
I know how to organize the workshop based on the conversation to get the big picture and common understanding of what to build

You will get several hints, useful tips and checklists like.
Steps how to build a big picture, Six simple steps for story mapping, A checklist of what to talk about during the conversation, Plan to build less. Plan to build on time, Plan to learn faster etc,

I consider User Story Mapping as my topbooks about product management on my list

What was missing
The second half of the book talks about the user story mapping in the context of the discovery process, product backlog, backlog refinement, design thinking, product review, product release and retrospective.
I had a strong impression that the narration lost tempo, Everything was fine until the author was focused on explaining what user story mapping is and how to use it.
I dont say thats bad, but I didnt read the second half with such focus, involvement and speed.


Favourite quotes:
“You and everyone else will learn that stories arent a way to write better requirements, but a way to organize and have better conversations.
” xxv

“If you get nothing else from this book, remember these things:
Stories arent a written form of requirements telling stories through collaboration with words and pictures is a mechanism that builds shared understanding.

Stories arent the requirements theyre discussions about solving problems for our organisation, our customers, and our users that lead to agreements on what to build.

Your job isnt to build more software faster: its to maximize the outcome and impact you get from what you choose to build ” xliv

“Stories get their name from how they should be used, not what should be written.
”
“The original idea of stories was a simple one, It turned our focus away from shared documents and toward shared understanding”

“At the top of the maps is the backbone, which sometimes has a couple of different levels.
You might start with the basic flow of the story, which is one level, But, when it gets really long, its useful to go up one more level to summarize things further.
”

“Every time we do this we find holes, We find things that we thought another team should be taking care of, but it didnt know.
”

“Eric is part of a team that took those ideas and ran with them, Thats what product owners do, If you thought they were always acting on their own great ideas, well, youre wrong, One of the hard parts of being a product owner is taking ownership of someone elses idea and helping to make it successful, or proving that it isnt likely to be.
The best product owners, like Eric, help their entire team take ownership of the product, ”

“But Eric knows his job is to minimize the amount he builds and still keep people happy”

“Youve already learned the two most important things that make stories work:
Use storytelling with words and pictures to build a shared understanding
Dont just talk about what to build: talk about who will use it and why so you can minimize output and maximize outcome”

“Stories get their name not from how theyre supposed to be written, but from how theyre supposed to be used”

“If youre not getting together to have rich discussions about your stories, then youre not really using stories”

“Story conversations are about working together to arrive at the best solution to a problem we both understand”

“It doesnt need to be written in a template to be considered a story”

“For me, the story template works a bit like learning the snowplow.
Use it to write the descriptions of your first stories”

“There are many different kinds of conversation with different people for every story”

“The most important thing here is that all these people are armed with the same picture in their heads: the picture they build while talking together”

“Itll help everyones sanity to separate out two concerns.
First: did we build what we agreed to build And then: if its what we agreed to build, now that we see it, should we make some changes”

“The difference between what you think people need and what they really need is the realm of product arrogance”

“Remember, our goal is to minimize the amount we build our output and maximize the benefit we get from doing it the outcomes and impact.
”

“Viable means successful for a specific business strategy, target customer, and users, ”

“This leads me to one of the biggest mistakes people make, and thats actually believing their minimal viable solution will be successful”

“They didnt build a full prototype.
They did have concerns that their solution would be really usable, and they couldnt learn that from a comic book.
They also had a few technical concerns that would require writing some prototype code to test, But none of that mattered if students didnt have the problem, and didnt respond well to their idea.

That smallest possible solution to test is what Lean Startup refers to as a minimum viable product.

“The only thing that trumps an executive opinion is cold, hard fact, ”.