User Story Mapping has been described as a niche tool to achieve much. Tools for product development, feature definition, version improvement and project management just to name a few.
In this case we are looking at the steps to success, utilising User Story Mapping methodology to help define your path. The first two steps instantly reward.
Firstly, planning the map rewards you a pathway to the point so that you can start writing user stories (a user story is a short description of something your customer will do when using your product).
Secondly, the end result is a visual chart showing the structure of your stories which gives you the steps to development.
Here is another way to approach User Story Mapping in three steps and this is a relatively quick way of getting to a point to start development work.
Hosting your Story Mapping Session
Because User Story Mapping can come across as complex it is important that management of the session is approached with a framework. Needless to say that User Story Mapping can be a new tool for most people so outlining what it is all about and describing the process is important.
Start with tasks where the team thinks about the product, users, development and personas.
Step One
We start by brainstorming every task that users will want to address when using the product.
Silent Brainstorming. Task each participant to write down steps in your cards, every step will need to cover from the users first engagement to the conclusion of the users interaction. Encourage the team to think of these as actions not features.
Top Tip: Writing them so they start with a verb is a good technique.
Encourage people to be creative and try to cover tasks and steps wide, but not deep. This part of User Story Mapping is about breadth not depth.
Start posting all cards and tasks in one large map. Thats fine, you’ll have duplicates, and these should sit beside each other on the line (not above or below). As you expand and learn you can easily drag and drop and delete if needed. The beauty of using digital software for large collaberation tasks such as this allows you and you and your team to easily edit, expand and develop your map.
This first line is the user tasks and they form the backbone of your story map.
Step Two
Then we organise these tasks into wider goals, and arrange them in order of completion.
These groups are known as “epics” or “activities”.
As facilitator you can walk along the line of tasks and ask where the team think the splits are between each group of tasks, and what each group should be called.
For example, if you were building an app for an app to arrange your movies you might group user tasks into epics like this:
Browse DVDs in collection – epic
View flat list of all DVDs – user task
View DVD cover thumbnails in results – user task
DVD Spec Call – user task
Step Three
We can then move into the Prioritisation exercise, further developing the user story map.
This is the stage where you start writing in the details, building up the tasks and redifining tasks. This may include adding tasks, merging tasks or seperating tasks.
It is important to detail the tasks enough to remember in the future.
After writing all the tasks, you should have a comprehensive map by this stage.
Task your team to go over each line (now defined as Epics/actitives) and ensure you have everything charted. This is where the User Story Map will become easier as you will now have a visual chart of a defined product. Here you can move to the next steps.
Next Steps
Now you are ready to start prioritising the user stories on your map. You can start adapting and moving your tasks to sprints, also known as versions for your product.
You can check out the Movie Buddy Public Board here at FeatureMap.
You can do this all with Post-It notes with your in house team, or digitally using FeatureMap.co with your teams remotely and digitially.