One of the difficult problems faced by an Agile team is that of getting reliable user input. Because Agile projects depend on minimal up-front planning and specification, user feedback is critical. But product owners are rarely users themselves and the actual end-users are often located elsewhere and may be highly diverse. This session introduces participants to Contextual Inquiry (CI), a proven field research method for understanding users and their needs. We introduce CI, show how it fits into Agile development, and give participants practice in gathering data and then writing user stories.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Simple_Methods_for_Reliable_User_Involvement.pdf
