Backlog

Saving projects with User Story Mapping

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An existing project can slow to a crawl when slowed down by bloat of additional features, the expanding set of criteria or a huge mass of

The ever-growing sprint list can spiral out of control and stall a project with a seemingly huge backlog of tasks.

Product development, and projects can stall when the process flows from between the client, the design thinking process and the development team.

Backlog is too large so save it with FeatureMap

So, how can you improve your backlog?

A User Story map is a perfect tool to visualise product roadmaps for non-technical stakeholders. Feature Map allows you to create your entire product and give an incredibly rich overview.

This allows you to visualise the whole user journey and how it maps its features into the product.

Turn your huge sprint list into a controlled backlog

How to save a project with User Story Mapping.

A completed user story map is the perfect centrepiece of any product discussion with stakeholders.

How it works is simple.

Identify your persona and understand the user journey

First, identify your personas.

They capture your goals, your behaviours and the needs for the end user.

They help you build your story map and give it life.

The personas should always be kept in mind when you add features to your board. Personas can naturally be real people or groups and made up.

The next step is simple.

Understand the user journey.

Take those personas and map out your product with each feature identified as a goal.

Break down each goal into a set of consecutive activities. It can help if you line up these personas to each of these goals.

Then capture each requirement to help achieve that user goal with the help of the stakeholders.

You should be able to formulate all the user stories and the acceptance criteria of what you want to build. Add as many details as you wish to each feature for your team to fully understand the goal.

Aggregate, add status, control your map

Control your map, add details, add status, aggregate and take control of your backlog.

You can add with future map annotations and estimate your features, time, budget or any other custom status.

Your team can collaborate on each feature by adding comments and tagging one another.

You can also add a set of different colours to help organise your map.

Once you have completed mapping your user stories journey, you will then be able to prioritise your backlog.

Each feature needs to be mapped to release, and the Golden Rule is that each release needs to be a valuable product slice across the user journey.

Understand the larger picture together as a team

Finally, do your last steps.

The most important features are placed at the top.

You’ll wish to start out simple and expand on the functionality of your product by adding new product slices.

These product slices can be converted into MVP’s or Sprint’s. With Feature Map, your product can evolve constantly and cards can be moved around by simply dragging and dropping.

You can also aggregate the values of each task on your map and be able to see how long in time or how much in budget each slice and goal may cost.

You can finally eradicate your long list of features, your overwhelming sprint lists, and your misleading Gantt charts.

Say Goodbye to sprint lists

A story map is the perfect tool to communicate your product vision with the members of your team and non-technical stakeholders. It beautifully pulls together the big picture and allows you to prioritise your product and progress while not forgetting the details.

Once you are happy, you can share your feature map board to anyone. Or you can invite your own team to collaborate further. Additionally, you can integrate with JIRA.

You can get started now, check out our templates, and sign up to FeatureMap and start your free trial.

Control your backlog, say goodbye to sprint lists.

Story Mapping: A Reliable Agile Methodolgy

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User Story Mapping - A Reliable Agile Methodology

Story Mapping consists of ordering a project or product into tasks and organising each one into segments so you can better understand the whole picture and make better informed decisions for timelines, resources and roadmaps.

Such tools as Trello can be great for tasks or quick lists, but when you need more than a just columns. User Story Mapping utilises an agile methodolgy, incorporates sprints and gives you a broader view across the entire project.

When it comes to backlogs it can feel overwhelming, in some cases difficult to grasp how to start or what to prioritise. At times projects can be entirely sidetracked by mismanagement of priorities and a good Story Map of a product can highlight the Minimum Viable Project.

To solve these situations a Story Map can be utilised to reduce the backlog, refocus the project and remind the entire team of the end goal.

When designing a Story Map you must look at the bigger picture. It is often sensible to set aside a period of time (hours or days) to effectively cover the vision. We have some further in depth guides and resources to read up which are linked again at the bottom of this article. But for now.. we’ll cover the basics as an intro to why Story Mapping is a reliable Agile Tool.

We have guides all across this blog, but to get you straight into it, lets do a quick theory crafting test.

You will need to set out the broad goals of the entire product… the ideals, the dreams, think big.

To best utilise Story Mapping is to tackle the entire big picture, not just a singular sprint. Do not fall into the trap of a niche narrow sprint at this stage. The power of User Story Mapping is being able to see the entire product and split it up into those sprints. To see what can the MVP, what can be the optimal, and even split the big picture into easy acessible projects.

First write out the user stories by setting out functions.

The fuctions could be “Logging in” or “Website Dev” or “Graphics Design”.

The limit is based on how you wish to organise. We suggest basic, and start simple as the beauty of working on a tool with many is the ability to adjust and change at will.

Good rules to follow:
Horizontally, set out the title and set the user story under each function.
Vertically, set out the main stories or issues related to each other.

At this stage you can then prioritise importance from left to right, and from up to down. This creates a format of the top left card, being the most important.

Once you have the information down in cads and across the board. Start to slice.

Slicing the list.

Once the stories are organised into groups and themes. You can start with slicing the list into sprints of what is the Minimum Viable Spec, or as Jeff Patton puts it — “The minimium viable product in the smallest product releases that successfully achieves its desired outcomes”.

Step 2 — You can see the sprints have seperated, clearly, what functions are required in each layer.

You can set sprints into what you need to achieve. The trick of utilising story mapping is by setting out the entire dream product, then breaking your product/project into sections of achievable, working, and required sprints.

Wait… are we done already?

Do remember, the story map is not a static beast, it can be adjusted, amended with feedback, changed and adapted to suit the needs.

With multiple team members working on it, as a team, you can start to see the end goal, the ideal product. When working as a group you will be able to clearly define what each of you need.

Too often I have seen teams all have an idea in their head, start with a map and quickly realise their shared vision was mismatched!

The simple act of making the map together re-aligned with everyone on the same page, generated new innovations and removed any potential future unnecessary friction.

Next Steps.

Some more tips for the next steps:

  • Set status of a card
  • You can set time estimations
  • Set importance of cards
  • Use colours to set a custom identifier, such as challenge or complexity.
  • Use extra columns and set sections

The use of a story map will grow with each iteration, and with each demand.

Step 3 — Expanded map with colours, descriptions, checklists, status, and time estimations.

One thing is to ensure you are always planning the entire project, clearing backlog and not focusing on individual sprints.

And all of a sudden you have a grasp of your project.

It really is that simple.

If you want to see the tool we used for the images, check out FeatureMap.co

Story Mapping Can Help Your Team Understand – Remote Offices in 2021

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Shared Understanding - A buzzword to describe group knowledge

When working with a large organisation it is not uncommon for everyone to picture the product from different angles, resulting in an understanding of the project or product in different ways. Story Mapping can help your team understand, bring those meetings to the digital and allow your remote working team to gain that shared understanding.

When you have multiple smaller teams come together to create a product, each team can have different requirements. This can clog up development and in some instances waste time, building the same features or two different features due to a bad understanding of the spec. These teams could be in the same office, or spread across the world. The challenge and solution is the same.

A few years ago I was assisting in the development of a now-popular mobile app. The team of designers all had different ideas on the end goal and it wasn’t until we mapped the entire user story that this was realised.

Confused Team Mapping Out Individual Requirements

The managers wanted to see a CRM in the backend that would allow them to see the flow of products and users and to manage the support workers and content creators.

The content creators wanted to have a CRM in the backend that allowed them to edit, create and update articles and products.

The sales team wanted to have a map system that would allow users to find a product based on location.

Shared Understanding with a Shared Vision

When we put all three together we could see an conflict of understanding. Two different CRM systems and a product completely overlooked by the other teams, with overlapping cards.

Without using a FeatureMap Board, this error may have gone unnoticed for an unspecified amount of time.

Cut down your time and mismanagement, introduce a macro level understanding and make your job easier managing your team. If you are a team member, you can understand the entire project/product and figure exactly how best to utilise all talents and input.

Mapping your story helps you find holes in your thinking.

When we set out and built an entire map, it was clear that each team had a different idea. Once they were able to list each card across the map, teams merged ideas, worked on the initial idea and framed the entire product.

Once the ideas had been merged, expanded and realised, the team was able to expand their understanding to a shared understanding.

Shared MVP Achieved With Understanding

The team were then able to split up their design into a minimum viable product that successfully achieved the desired outcome.

Sadly, it was realised that months had been wasted on planning features of a project with no compatiblity with the rest of the team.

Fortunately, when creating their product on FeatureMap (even linking with remote team members across the world) they were able to hash out a new plan and deliever well within time.

Mapping your story helps with shared understanding.

When starting with FeatureMap, it doesn’t matter if you are mid project, or at the start of a new journey.

Mapping out the entire product, even at a high level macro level will help your entire team progress forward.

You can start with FeatureMap today for free, with an instant 2 week trial to access all the extra features such as aggregation, import, export, enhanced status cards and alike.

Sign up to FeatureMap Today

That old code is way overdue. How to plan your Legacy rewrite.

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Re-write your legacy application using User Story Mapping

Does your current application need its legacy code rewritten to benefit from security, new features, modern integrations and to get with the new working world of remote WFH lifestyle?

Stop putting it off.

We’ll go over how to tackle the mammoth task and break it down to an approcable and task worth completing.

People often mistake User Story Mapping as a tool to start projects, but it is entirely suitable for building up an old project or design or plugging into an active project to help redefine the backlog, MVP and process. Afterall.. you need to start with your MVP or risk feature creep and stagnation.

FeatureMap can be used to help you plan out a current project or in this case, current piece of software. First approach the product/project/app and hash out the main features of the finished and current code.

A few options may be available to you, depending on the code:

Are you able to update the tool in sections?
Are you able to approach the update in sprints/versions?
Do you need to rebuild the entire program from scratch?

Take a moment, start you map and make a column and throw in ideas, thoughts, approaches, decisions. This is more for reference that you can draw from as you plan out the current software.

You can utilise basic User Story Mapping and decide where to place these cards, with which layers, columns and sections on your map.

Below and in these examples, we will refer ot our “Moviebuddy” app, a fictional app to help sorts your DVD collection.

The Moviebuddy Current Version

We then worked through identifying which sections were redundant and not required after the code update. We identified these and added them to a new column to the side. Essentially removing them from view. Some of these features were workarounds that the new framework would natively support so we can remove those, yet we still need to rewrite some of the related code. Be sure to add discriptions for your team to reference that may help them realise your decisions.

In this case, our team assembled and had an online meeting to identified which parts of the code would be updated and what we should be prioritised as a framework. We labelled this as version 1 and aimed to get the core functions updated. The MVP of re-writes.

Identifying what we should upgrade first in Version 1

We were able to identify one function which we were able to upgrade. We also added new cards which reminded us to update our code standards and highlighted them green to ensure they were completed.

We then moved along to the next version which allowed us to introduce our new payment gateway to the application. A function that had alluded us due to the old codebase.

Adding a new Codebase column and moving to version 1.5

This allowed us to deploy more frequently and provide value sooner as we updated sections of the site. We still had a lot of ‘old legacy code’ but as we added new features we moved the legacy code functions inline with our updates.

Re-writing your legacy code is so very typically neuenced and specific to your use case, but I hope with these examples above you can see how to:

  • Add your current app to a map.
  • Collaborate with your team to share the same understanding.
  • Highlight what is redudant.
  • Task and outline new expanded features.
  • Work through the MVP and assign with the team members.
  • Estimate time, costings and aggregate them for team leaders to quickly understand.
  • Rewrite your legacy code
  • Have a celebration

As you can see using User Story Mapping can be brand new projects, or old existing projects.

It’s 2021 already, stop putting that task off, realise how easy and approachable it is with a User Story Map. Break down the mountain to bite size tasks and update that out of date framework!

If you need direct advice, coaching, a guide or want to book some time to explore FeatureMap, do feel free to reach out to us, but first…

Get Started for Free with FeatureMap.co
Moviebuddy is all fictional for the purpose of training.

Story Mapping in 2021: A Reliable Agile Methodology

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Managing a project can be approached in a multitude of ways, and in 2021, with remote working and offices on the rise. User Story Mapping has rapidly stood out amongst the many agile methods. In one sentence, it can be easily explained as ordering a project (or product) into tasks and organising by priority and sophistication.

Let’s start with a brand new project, or we can take an existing project backlog. When it comes to backlogs it can be overwhelming, at times difficult to grasp, or what you should prioritise. At times projects are entirely sidetracked by mismanagement of priorities but user story mapping can resolve this.

Story Mapping can be utilised to reduce the backlog, refocus the project and remind the entire team of the end goal.

When designing a Story Map you must look at the bigger picture. It is often sensible to set aside a period of time (hours or days) to effectively cover exploring your vision.

You will need to set out the goals of the entire product, the ideals, the dreams, think big. To best utilise Story Mapping is the big picture, not just a sprint. Do not fall into the trap of a niche narrow sprint at this stage.

First write out the user stories by setting out functions.

Step 1 — Functions and user stories set out in a grid.

Horizontally, set out the title and set the user story under each function.
Vertically, set out the main stories or issues related to each other.

At this stage you can then prioritise importance from left to right, and from up to down. This creates a format of the top left card, being the most important.

Slicing the list.

Once the stories are organised into groups and themes. You can start with slicing the list into sprints of what is the Minimum Viable Spec, or as Jeff Patton puts it — “The minimum viable product in the smallest product releases that successfully achieves its desired outcomes”.

Step 2 — You can see the sprints have seperated, clearly, what functions are required in each layer.

You can set sprints into what you need to achieve. The trick of utilising story mapping is by setting out the entire dream product, then breaking your product/project into sections of achievable, working, and required sprints.

Next Steps.

Do remember, the story map is not a static beast, it can be adjusted, amended with feedback, changed and adapted to suit the needs of each sprint.

With multiple team members working on it, as a team, you can start to see the end goal. The ideal product starts to form and when working as a group you will be able to clearly define what each task, and part of the project needs.

  • Set status of a card
  • You can set time estimations
  • Set importance of cards
  • Use colours to set a custom identifier, such as challenge or complexity.
  • Use extra columns and set sections

The use of a story map will grow with each iteration, and with each demand.

Step 3 — Expanded map with colours, rags, and time estimations.

One thing is to ensure you are always planning the entire project, clearing backlog and not focusing on individual sprints.

If you want to see the tool we used for the images, check out FeatureMap.co

If you want to dig deeper into User Story Mapping, check out the how-tos Tutorials.

Working From Home in Isolation due to Covid-19

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As the world reacts to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are faced with new challenges every day. Countries go into lockdown, workspaces close, and individuals go into self-isolation. Although remote work is already a reality in 2020, with some companies prepared or completely online, for some it may be an entirely new approach.

FeatureMap has moved from its dedicated and shared offices to a mixture of shared spaces, distributed offices and remote employees across three countries. In making these changes, we identified more effective practices, saved on overheads and costs, and introduced a new culture and productivity. As other companies also turn to the remote online workspace, we thought it would be a good time to share some of our experiences and tips for getting the best out of your distributed team.

We are here to help, so if your small–medium business is impacted by COVID-19, reach out to us at team@featuremap.co and see how we can find a solution for you during this time.

Working from Home

Things you need for your team to be successful while working from home remotely:

  • Team chat
  • Video conferencing capability with screen share options
  • Digital backlog management
  • Shared documents
  • Time management
  • Ways to stay connected with each other

 

A laptop of a remote worker starting with distributed team about to utilise user story mapping with featuremap.co
Make your office space at home comfortable for remote working.

Team chat

There are many chat tools available online. We recommend Slack, Discord and Skype, but Slack in particular. It allows you to continue conversations throughout the course of work, either directly through private messages or in channels that act as meeting rooms. Everyone will be able to see discussions in these channels, so wise management using features like thread conversations will be key to an effective collaborative environment.

Video conferencing

This includes daily discussions, team voice chats, and one-to-one meetings. We recommend video conferencing to encourage a continued level of professionalism, but being able to chat with somebody face-to-face can create more effective communication.

Good video conferencing software offers voice chat, video, and screen share. The ability to easily and quickly share your screen to your remote team during a meeting is time-saving gold dust. Zoom, TeamViewer, and Slack all offer this functionality.

However, be aware that both chat and voice calls can be disruptive if used unnecessarily: imagine getting called to meeting after meeting in the office!

Digital backlog management

When you first start working remotely, it’s important to update the management of your tasks and responsibilities to your new environment. All those sticky notes on your monitor and scribbles left on your desk won’t work anymore. You have to go digital.

If you have a project manager, ask them to recreate your collaborative spaces in a digital space as soon as possible. Your remote team being able to access a single platform for project planning will not only help foster self-discipline but will also improve productivity. Ensure you use a tool that protects you, is easy to set up, and is clear, precise, and agnostic.

If you have any questions about FeatureMap.co, privacy, security of our online cloud or our on-premise options, drop an email over to team@featuremap.co

When we first created FeatureMap, we designed the fundamental principles based on Jeff Patton’s User Story Mapping model. Since then, however, we have evolved and developed to create a tool that can be used in multiple environments with a wide range of practices, including user story mapping, development, product management, team task management, agile workflows, kanban, and task lists.

When you recreate your collaborative space online, remember that utilising labels, custom fields, colour tags and assignments can really help you take control of your workflow.

 

A remote worker taking his user story mapping post it notes to a digital tool
Take your post-it notes and put them online for your team.

Moving to the digital space for project management

If you are moving from a physical workspace to the digital one, and are starting afresh, you will need to first identify and define the project’s backbone.

Designate a group of people to explore your project and identify the user experience and journey. Focus on the breadth of tasks first, then build in the depth.

Using a shared workspace to collaborate live, whilst using video chat, can really help bring your session together as well as improve the quality of the end result.

Build a map and, if you need to, outline all the projects, cases, tasks and work within it. If you want to dig deeper into user story mapping while your team is distributed, check out our guide on how to get started.

If you are still uncertain and want a demo of FeatureMap.co, do reach out at sales@featuremap.co and we’ll be happy to schedule a live demo for a small team.

 

A FeatureMap marketing story map demonstrating some of the features of User Story Mapping and Agile.
Covid-19 – Taking your physical to the digital with FeatureMap.co

Daily check-ins

Daily check-ins can really bring together a remote and distributed team. Each morning, share what your tasks are, or what you are working on, via chat and then follow up that report by mirroring the workflow on your map for the later check-in. This is a great method to check who is working on what, the progress, where blocks may occur, and how everyone is progressing with their tasks.

Management can be utilised by sharing Google docs, following up on emails or arranging voice calls. A story map can be a quick snapshot view for all team members to understand the project stage.

Distributed team culture

Building a culture, keeping the team connection healthy, and improving communication with remote teammates is crucial. For this, team chat and communication is important. Adding a space where people can chat, share their daily lives, or simply talk before work or a meeting fosters healthy growth, keeps people engaged, and helps your teammates learn about each other. You can even build on this by creating virtual lunches together, having healthy competition about the “best lunch”, and more.

 

Try FeatureMap Today, and if you need more users, have feedback or suggestions. Do reach out and we can find a solution to help cover you while Covid-19 impacts your business.

Multi-uses of User Story Mapping

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User Story Mapping is normally a technique for Product Development, but you need not limit yourself for just one task or function.

Here we explore outside the box and look at applying User Story Mapping to product lessons, customer feedback, marketing strategies and even Christmas lists.

Software Development

User Story Mapping is most commonly used for software development. You are able to outline and see the bigger picture of your product. You can prioritise the user stories, identify the journey of your users and involve all team members to have a shared understanding.

It is not just a tool that you use to outline the project, it is a technique applied to every step of the way. You can change, adapt, reprioritise, add further tasks, scrap old tasks, and so on. While ideal to sit on a wall in the office with post-it notes one large company has a large 75″ display in the office with their FeatureMap on display for all offices and departments.

Moving to the digital has its benefits and allows all departments and those remote to the office to collaborate. In addition, you can allow your shareholders and in some cases, even your customers to get involved.

Movie Buddy first MVP

 

Product Lessons

Occasionally after a campaign, season, or annual review you look back at your product and hold a session of “product lessons learnt”:

  • Promote the recurrence of desirable outcomes
  • Preclude the recurrence of undesirable outcomes

Using User Story Mapping here can help you outline the user journey. Define each step which worked, and highlight what should be removed or revised.

Using layers you are able to prioritise your learnings by the impact on the user using analytics data, internal comments and observations, incident reports, and any further data or knowledge that can build a picture about your product and its presence.

Your goal is not to create a product but to highlight the users experience to learn.

 

Customer Feedback

Developing your map can involve the customer, allowing a public-facing map and open process you can get feedback direct from the customer.

Taking suggestions, feedback and ideas from customers is the golden goose.

We’ve all had the occasional user when you open up your ticket support system or email and in the inbox sits 10 emails all from the same person hammering feedback after feedback. These users are my favourite, and while initially a shock to the system, they offer the best value.

Taking all feedback to build your User Story Map and highlight the pain points reported.

Set columns for feedback, suggestions, bug reports and crashes.

Again, do not set this as a product development map but a feedback map and this can help you prioritise your next steps for development and also feed directly into Product Lessons.

 

Marketing and email strategy

When defining the user flow from a cold lead to a warm lead, add in tracking, and stages you’ll soon hit a complicated process. User Story Mapping, the super-hero of project management is here again.

Setting our a User Flow from cold lead, to warm lead, to sign-up, to conversion can all be done with a FeatureMap.

While mailing systems, like mail-chimp, can work exceptionally defining a campaign, following a user along a sales process (especially when plugged into marketing) is broader than MailChimp.

Below I have defined a map in FeatureMap to give you an example of a marketing process. Click the image to see the Map on FeatureMap.co:

A Marketing and Email example for a fictional product.

 

Christmas Lists

Happy Holidays to you all, and time for a bit of fun, but an entirely function one.

This year I was planning out what to buy my friends, family and fellow office workers and wanted a way to track what I had purchased. In some cases, I have commissioned artwork and needed picture frames and had presents that became a multi-stage process. I turned to User Story Mapping and whipped up a FeatureMap to help manage who was getting what!

Check out our Christmas Demo Map below:

Christmas Gifts Mapping – A fun way to use FeatureMap

Do you use User story mapping for any other purpose?

If you wish to try out FeatureMap.co it is free to use, and has a trial period upon signup of the premium features!

How to re-write your Legacy Application using Story Mapping

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People often mistake User Story Mapping as a tool to start projects, but it is entirely suitable for building up an old project or design.

When looking at your application it is easy to first create  User Story Map based on the products functions.

Establish the tasks, the goals and flesh out the map. Sometimes you may taken things for granted and forget certain tools of the application are actually tasks so it’s a good idea to bring in people from other teams to help identify all the functions of your project.

Build the map, identifiying all the functions.

We once took an old tool and needed to update the codebase, as well as introduce new features and improvements.

A few options may be available to you, depending on the code. Are you able to update the tool in sections? Are you able to approach the update in sprints/versions? Do you need to rebuild the entire program from scratch?

We first built the map of our tool, you can see below our “Moviebuddy” example.

The Moviebuddy Current Version

We then worked through identifying which sections were redundant. We identified these and added them to a new column to the side. Essentially removing them from view.

We then talked out and identified which parts of the code would be updated and what we could do first. We labelled this as version 1 and aimed to get the core functions updated.

Identifying what we should upgrade first in Version 1

We were able to identify one function which we were able to upgrade. We also added new cards which reminded us to update our code standards and highlighted them green to ensure they were completed.

We then moved along to the next version which allowed us to introduce our new payment gateway to the application. A function that had alluded us due to the old codebase.

Adding a new Codebase column and moving to version 1.5

This allowed us to deploy more frequently and provide value sooner as we updated sections of the site. We still had a lot of ‘old legacy code’ but as we added new features we moved the legacy code functions inline with our updates.

As you can see using User Story Mapping can be brand new projects, or old existing projects.

Moviebuddy is all fictional for the purpose of training.

 

User Story Mapping : From Idea to MVP

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When we look at User Story Mapping, you may think of the backlog of user stories, or how it can be a great methodolgy to reduce and refine your current project or product flow. But User Story Mapping doesn’t just need to be a tool applied to a backlog heavy project. It can be used to refine an idea to a product.

Refine the Idea

Take the product and ask yourself and your team these questions:

  1. What is the overall idea?
  2. Who are the customers?
  3. Who are the end users?
  4. Why would they want it?
  5. Why are we building it?

Find out what the project and product is for, validate your reasoning, search for problems, take the steps now to refine your idea.

Build to Learn

With the initial idea fleshed out, first build your product with the aim to learn. A less than MVP (Minimum Viable Product), a product that covers the simple basis for your users.

With this stage you do not want to market, push or give out the product as “The product” but to a small group of users. Ideally users you spoke to initally that may have sparked the idea of the product.

As part of this step you need to harvest the feedback, and constantly refine your idea. Build wants but be care ful to actually listen to what the user wants.

At this stage metrics will help as it is common people will fall into a loose three categories:

  1. The Polite Enabler. — The user who says everything is great, but doesnt use the product.
  2. The Complainer. — The user who sends in lists of feedback and demands, but actually uses the product.
  3. The Mute. — The user who uses the product and says nothing.

The polite user is probably the worst for building to learn, with the complainer being your favourite user. However be careful the complainer is not just demanding features that detract or do nothing.

The Mute you’ll need to reach out, engage and ask for feedback with offered incentives. The mute can be valuable.

Applying to Story Mapped Backlog

You now have your project released, some feedback and ideas of how to take it from big idea to big success.

We recommend organising a horizontal strip of User Actitives. You will have this from the first step, and the questions. This will form the backbone and be the foundation of your map.

Below in vertical strips arrange into three tiers:

  • Current Relase
  • Next Release(s)
  • Future Ideas

Each card will have indepth details about the feature.

Example Layout in FeatureMap.co

Then when organised, take the highest priority stories or layers and move into the current sprint.

This is one great way to take Idea to MVP.

Common Pitfalls

I might write a piece entirely about the pitfalls I see new projects and products fall to when designing their story map and MVP.

  1. Perfection — When designing a product do not focus and lose yourself to the “Just one more feature” which adds time and bloat to inital ideas.
  2. Make a skateboard first — When making a car, first design a skateboard that allows the user to at least get somewhere. Do not fall into the trap of building car parts with no method to go.

To illustrate this Henrik Kniberg wrote an article talking about how he prefers “Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable” over MVP.

Henrik Kniberg

Validate your MVP

When designing your product, each sprint sent to product should be reviewed, measured and with feedback and data — learn.

With that learn knowledge refine your idea.

With that refined idea, revamp your MVP and build.

  • Build — MVP
  • Measure — Get feedback and data
  • Refine — Improve with better ideas
  • Repeat — Back to Build.

With User Story Mapping this is easy, especially when using a tool like FeatureMap.co as the ease and flow of a team all working, moving and adjusting cards on the fly makes it invaluable.