A story user map is a method for visually covering a story, to help discussions. The main purpose for making a map is to build shared comprehension for the individuals of a team.
When building your story map, you should include all the relevent people, regardless of position, in the team. Due to their different foundations and interests, they all get valuable points of view. Everybody has an unmistakable and common comprehension of what they are about to build together.
Product owner, testers, technical lead, customer support, architect, UX/UI designer, sales and marketing, etc. All have their own techniques and requirements which will help you create your map.
How to build a story map
If you are brand new to user story mapping, we have a short and sweet exercise. Let’s take a simple real-life example of “getting ready for work”.
- Start with the goal.
What is the story map about?
What are you trying to accomplish?
The main overall purpose. - Second list your main stories, your main tasks or activities. From left to right, insert the main steps of the story map that need to happen.
- Move on and detail each main list – column by column, left to right.
In the case of product features, the layers can be then developed and you can plan out MVP‘s, or product iterations with each following layer.
When exploring product features, build story maps for multiple options that solve the underlying problem. Allow your entire team to contribute and come to and understanding of the final decision.
Story User Maps are ideal for allowing a team to design out a product feature and reduce the need to go back half way through development because XYZ requirement was missed out.
Check out our Getting Ready For Work Map
We cover three different user-case situations we can use Story Mapping.