User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn. Addison-Wesley, 2004.
This book is all about user stories, focused on the XP-style customer or the Scrum-style product owner (although programmers and others should know this material as well). Mike describes what stories are, how to generate them, and how to estimate and plan with them. He contrasts them to use cases and IEEE-830 “The system shall” requirements, and includes a catalog of “story smells.” The book closes with an example of a system described with 30+ stories, and its tests.
A customer needs to know more than stories (including how to manage up-front analysis that might financially justify a product or feature, linkages to outside groups, innovation, and more.) But those aren’t this book’s topic: this book sets out to provide a clear, very well-written, and concise guide to using stories with a software team. It does a great job: I’m seeding copies with several people! (Reviewed June, ’04)