Story mapping
A story map tells the story of how a user will be able to use your product and helps teams get a shared understanding of the work to be done on a project. It is a detailed view of your solution to user’s needs.
Not to be confused with a customer journey map, which looks at how a user interacts with a product or service to identify pain points and moments of delight, or a job map, which is solution agnostic and maps out what the customer is trying to get done through a needs view.
When to use
When you want to align a team on what it is you’re building. When you want to explore the scope of your solution and carve out releases, define MVP, and/or create a development strategy.
Common pitfalls
This exercise can fail when the product goals/direction haven’t been framed well enough. The story map zooms in on the details of what is to be built, so the “why” should be well understood by everyone on the team so that folks are anchored to the same objective.
Origins
Jeff Patton is credited as the inventor of story mapping and he has literally written the book on it (User Story Mapping).
Outcome
- A clear picture of what the team is building
- MVP definition or release slices
Method
- Frame - before mapping, create a short product or feature brief to frame and constrain what you map. Think of this as the big story.
- Map the big picture - focus on getting the whole story and fleshing out the backbone of the map.
- Explore - fill out the body of the map, getting into interface details. Think “wouldn’t it be cool if…”
- Slice out viable releases - map out holistic slices that tie to specific outcomes. Identify success metrics for each slice.
- Slice out a development strategy - break out a release into development phases. Refine stories, define acceptance criteria, make your plan.
Resources
Refer to Jeff Patton’s excellent two pager for more instructions on the method and how to think about each element of the map (activities, tasks, etc)