Kessler and Sweitzer's Outside-in Software Development should resonate deeply with all those who genuinely value the principle of customer collaboration in the Agile Manifesto, and with anyone who has played the role of Product Manager for a software project. This 2008 Jolt award Finalist is not a book about eliciting or prioritizing requirements (or "user stories") for an Agile project. This book goes beyond mere user-stories and their ranking or velocity to focus on uncovering the underlying needs and goals of your stakeholders and understanding what truly adds value for the customer and the business.

... I think Outside-in Software Development is a profoundly important book for anyone in the Agile or Lean "camps" because it addresses and embraces the often neglected pieces of the customer-relationship puzzle that emerge from the stakeholders' perspective, often after the software is released. It shows us how many of those same Lean and Agile values of collaboration, responsiveness, waste-elimination, and respect for people can be successfully applied to the users' experience with our software, and to the stakeholders' experience with ourselves in the service of realizing the very business value we strive to deliver.