STORY MAPPING

Product Camp Austin 11

User Story Mapping is an an approach to Organizing and

Prioritizing user storiesTechnique by Jeff Patton

Challenges with One dimensional

backlogs• Do you

understand the workflow?

• Are you able to see the relationship of larger stories to child stories?

• How do you validate that your backlog is complete?

• What context do you use as a context for prioritization?

We want to Shift the Process from a Requirements Delivery Process…

False Assumptions:1. The customer knows what he

wants2. The developers know how to build

it3. Nothing will change along the way

…To a Requirements Discovery Process

Reality:1. The customer discovers what he

wants2. The developers discover how to

build it3. Many things change along the way

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

What were all the things you did to get ready to be here today?

Starting from the moment you woke up until you arrived hereWrite one item per Post-it note

In a small group (3 to 5 people) merge these post-its into a single model

Arrange them left to right in an order that makes sense to the group

Eliminate duplicates

Cluster items that seem similar and create labels for the clusters if items seem to go together

User tasks are decomposed into smaller tasks and

organized into activities

User tasks make ideal user stories

User Story Mapping is Collaborative & Fosters Co-

Ownership

User Story Maps help us see things from a user’s

perspective

With User Story Mapping you can test for Gaps by Walking

the Map

The user story map contains two important anatomical

features

The backbone

The walking skeleton

Reading the activities across the top of the system helps us understand end-to-end

use of the system.

User Story Mapping helps you Prioritize with Context

User Story Maps help us plan releases in complete and

valuable slices

How do you think you could benefit from User Story

Mapping?