XP Release Planning and User Stories

The "Circle of Life" in XP is the cycle: On-Site Customer, Planning Game, Small Releases, Acceptance Tests. This cycle, repeated for every release, and for every iteration, is the heartbeat of an XP project. It provides the requirements that the programmers need in order to program, the development velocity and quality information that management needs in order to steer the project, and the connection between wish and reality that the customer needs in order to choose what to do next and when to release. We don't call it the Circle of Life lightly.