In this presentation recorded during QCon London 2007, Rachel Davies, director of Agile Alliance, talks about the Agile development cycle starting with user stories and planning the releases. This presentation is less about "why" one should use Agile over other development process, and more about the practical "how" one should proceed about being agile.
Rachel talks about the 3 essential C's: Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. Cards are used to write user stories on them during the early phases of development, so anybody can have a quick look at what the software is supposed to do from the user's perspective. The cards can be arranged and rearranged in groups, or sorted based on priority. During the Conversation, the developers have the chance to talk to the business people, trying to understand what they are actually looking for with the software to be developed. During Confirmation, the team tries to figure out which are the necessary acceptance tests to be written.
Agile development needs a release plan. The release is generally made up of several milestone releases, which are also made up by a series of iterations. An iteration is a short period of time followed by the internal release of a workable piece of software. A release plan should be very flexible and adapted to the changing requirements.
The entire presentation is 1 hour long.