User story mapping games for learning

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User Story Mapping can seem daunting when you first pull up a full FeatureMap. If those on your team are not familiar with the technique it can really slow down your sessions. Yet the technique is innately simple and can be taught very quickly.

Here I outline some of the quick and easy 30 minute games that you can add to your teaching workshop, or that you can go over yourself to help share or gain a n understanding on how to approach user story mapping.

 

Get to Work!

One of the easiest and well known games is the “Get to work” or “Wake up in the morning” tasks.

You write out on your map what you do each morning. This can be broken down to the most mundane steps.

I once had a team member write out everything they did which included an impressive rising time of 4am and 3 hours of morning preperation. I have since added to the challenge that they only have 20 minutes to get up and to get out the door to get to work.

What you can do is expand the task to reduce the time available, and to extend the time available to experience with what they add and cut aka minimal viable product! 😉

We have a map here of an example of our “Get to work”

Getting Ready for Work example on FeatureMap
Getting Ready for Work example on FeatureMap

 

Planning a vaction

Another exercise is to add a time limit, deadline and propose they prepare for a vaction.

Setting my team of 1 month to there vaction they had to go through steps of checking passport, renewing, booking flights, checking luggage, buying missing items, packing, items, etc.

After the team had planned what they needed to do, you can again add time restraints such only 1 week to plan, and even only 1 day.

Doing this can education again the MVP and how to adjust and move the map around to suggest the best plan.

 

Describe an existing product

A good exercise to describe a common well known product, or even if a competitors product. This exercise can be used to take the focus from games and activies to a more development and industry focused task and will later help with your projects.

The last time our team covered this we had just seen a recent update to Spotify so we outlined and described the product, desktop, browser and mobile.

We explored the application and spent some time designing the task out, splitting it into sections and then created the foundation or backbone of the application.

 

When you have created the backbone product you can then start adding extra features in sprints, or even removing tasks and features to create an application lite, in this case it was “Spotfiy lite” or a media player.

We ended up designing Winamp!

 

We then ended up designing a fictional application about movies called “Movie Buddy” which we now use as a demonstration FeatureMap still today.

The Moviebuddy Current Version

 

 

User Story Mapping Exercises

Using games and exercises to teach any product or methodology will be met with variation. Be aware of your audience, what will work and tailor your tutorials to fit them.

Some important tips for running these games.

  • Keep the time taken per exercise to under 30 minutes
    • Split each task of a game into 5 minute periods.
  • User FeatureMap or good old fashioned sticky notes and markers.
    • Use walls, floors or tables.
    • You can always do a final lesson of converting sticky notes to digital
  • Discourage a “leader” who may make all choices, allow all particpants to take part.
  • Try to aim for 30 tasks.
  • If you are teaching, do the tasks beforehand so you are able to help with prior experience on the subject matter.

 

User Story Mapping is innately simple with a huge range of depth that can be demonstrated in deep and powerful maps. If you need more assistance or ideas, check out how to help your team understand.

 

Good Luck!

FeatureMap JIRA integration now supports Atlassian API tokens

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We have an important update about JIRA Integration which will affect your workflow and connection.

You should take action now to re-enable your connection to JIRA.

Earlier in the year Atlassian announced an upcoming change in the way usernames work in JIRA and third party applications. Today 17/4/2019 the support for usernames was removed and now requires a API Token to connect to your FeatureMap.

From today FeatureMap will NOT connect to JIRA using the old username and password. This will disable automatic sync and a new Token will need to be generated to continue using JIRA integration.

The new API tokens offer more security and can be revoked at anytime. An active token is required for synchronization.

 

Generate your new API token:

To create an API token from your Atlassian account:

  1. Log in to https://id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens.
  2. Click Create API token.
  3. From the dialog that appears, enter a memorable and concise Label for your token and click Create.
  4. Click Copy to clipboard, then paste the token to your script, or elsewhere to save:

 

Update your JIRA credentials in FeatureMap:

To update the settings of your maps in FeatureMap:

  1. Open the map synced with JIRA, click the “Configure Map” button

  2. If the window says “Invalid username or password”, click the “Edit settings” button

  3. Enter the new credentials (email address + api token) then click “Test settings”

  4. If the window now says “Connection ok“, click “Save settings“.

It’s as easy as that and you are good to go!

Formatting Text with Markdown

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FeatureMap allows Markdown in the description of each card. Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.

Markdown is a simple markdown language you can use to easily add formatting to your cards. We do not support images or HR from Markdown at this time, you can see below the list of supported Markdown Text that can help you get your descriptions on cards:

  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Bulleted lists
  • Numbered lists
  • Headings
  • Links

Adding Markdown to text

 
Formatting Entered text Published text
Bold This is how you **bold** text. This is how you bold text
Italics This is how you *italicize* text. This is how you Italicize text
Bulleted lists * Bullet one (don’t forget a space after the asterisk)

* Bullet two

Note: You must type a line break before and after the list.
  • Bullet one (don’t forget a space after the asterisk)
  • Bullet two
Numbered lists 1. Step one

2. Step two

Note: Do not use a hashtag (#) when creating numbered lists in Markdown, as the symbol is used for other formatting.
  1. Step One
  2. Step Two
Headings # Heading level one (with a space after the #)

## Heading level two

### Heading level three

You can add up to six heading levels.

Heading one

Heading two

Heading three
Links [Link display text](http://www.featuremap.co) FeatureMap

 

Markdown is used for writing in the web, currently we are experimenting with upgrading our interface to allow an option to use alternative formatting systems.

If you have any questions about our Markdown syntax feel free to drop an email over to support@featuremap.co

Who, What, Why? – User Story Mapping

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User Story Mapping is often described as an easy process and maps are created by simply working through the user’s journey.

Sometimes it can sound simple, but at times you need to define the user’s journey.

Occasionally you’ve had a developer, or project manager who has already defined stories and just wants to regurgitate this journey onto a plan and have everyone agree. This sometimes works, but more often than not other team members are left wondering about more details and features, problems, and most importantly, better solutions are missed.

User Story Mapping is not just creating a map for the purpose of a great visual understanding, but it is also a great time to go over questions and really expose the plan.

Just as your first bunch of questions:

  1. Who for?
  2. Why?
  3. What?

Critical thinking can be applied with great b0ons to any endevour and User Story Mapping is no different.

Who for?

Those working on the map should have a clear defined understanding who the users are.

  • Who is the user that mapped this journey?
  • How is this user different to other users?
  • Do we need to expand our user scope at this stage?

Understanding who the users are will provide that focus for complex design and if the user is an actual real user, then knowing this person will help with focusing the team to provide something for someone real.

What?

Defining what the user is doing with your project, app or endevour will be the main crux and defining question for all over User Story Mapping.

  • What are the users trying to achieve?
  • What do the users benefit over using your solution?
  • What other solutions are available?
  • What needs to defined?

Why?

Starting with an understanding of not only who the user is, but why this story needs to be mapped is crucial to have a worthwhile map.

Asking questions to help the entire mapping team directs.

  • Why does the story need to be created?
  • Why does it need to be defined?
  • Why would this information help decide scale and stability?

Once you have the ideal persona, and the ideal customer or user you can create an epic from the persona.

Label all your epics necessary to meet your users goals, but it is okay to keep them rough as you’ll be able to quick edit the table, adjust, delete and add more columns as needed.

  • Turn the users functions into rough epics
  • Turn the products functionality into rough epics
  • Capture the interaction and sequences
The StoryMap of Alex’s Morning with the Goals, Then Epics, then Cards.

 

Then go deeper and refine each Epic into the cards.

It is normal to be challenged with your first iterations with a User Story Map and it’s okay to continually develop them.

Keep the users entire journey and story in mind, and don’t stop asking the questions, who, what , why?

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!

User Story Mapping – Steps to Success

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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.

A finished User Story Map example.

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.

The Moviebuddy Current Version

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.

Check out FeatureMap.co and sign up to try for free.

5 Reasons to use User Story Mapping for Project management.

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5 Reasons to use User Story Mapping for Project management.

It can be a nightmare when planning out a project or joining a team to plan the project and you are met with Word documents. It is even worse when the customer and your team are expected to settle on the design outline of a word document with no future changes.

Requirements always change as customers and teams discover more about their project as it progresses. Expectations change, development requirements are adjusted, improved upon and developed and tracking all these changes in a Word document leads to madness.

User Story Mapping is a clear-cut methodology that let teams plan software releases that create visual maps of customer requirements. User stories are typically written on sticky notes or developed on a virtual map with absolute collaboration. (FeatureMap).

Here are five reasons why you should utilise User Story Mapping for your next project.

1. Prioritize the most important requirements.

Story maps let teams identify the really important reuqirements, and then allows the team to real-time amend and edit the map with development and feedback. While doable with sticky notes, the interactive collaboration of FeatureMap allows on the fly editing and at a glance live progress.  With a story map, teams can prioritize the most important features first and deliver code based on the prioritized features.

Built in sprints allowing a basic MVP program to be released before moving into sprint 2 and building the next product.

Features can be identify and built in sprints in multiple MVP states with ease, rather than developing one function in its entirety. It allows you to build your function, then at a later stage refines the features across with each iteration. You can easily identify what is most important and what is a core feature. Splits large requirements into small slices

2. Enforces task separation to encourage smaller sprints.

Cards and Post-it notes have literal maximum space. A good habit is born and can be utilised for your User Story Map creation. You have to be brief in the requirement description. If the requirement description is too complex to be stated on a single card, simply break it up into two cards. Create to functions, two tasks which can be split (if required) into multiple sprints.

This again allows the project to be refined and delivered on time with clarity and simplicity.

No more twenty page documents!

3. Communication with the stakeholder.

User Story maps aid with communication with the customer/stakeholder. Each customer requirement is then aligned with a task or card, the customer can understand at a glance what functionality will be delivered with each sprint and release.

With FeatureMap you can create a map for your development team, and share it publically to those with the URL link, the customer will see, real-time of your development map. Alternatively, you can create a map from a map (like cloning) and then share that map as a “snapshot” of the progress. And of course, you can export the map in a multitude of ways.

If the customer wants a feature delivered earlier, the customer can see which stage the feature or card is in and if involved in the process can adjust the map.

See this map as an example: https://www.featuremap.co/mp/5lJ74H/markus-goals

4. Communication with the team to help define and manage trade-offs and objectives.

Potentially the most important benefit. Using a User Story Mapping map will boost communication and discussion. Visual thinking is common in approximately 60%–65% of the general population, leaning on statistically your team will benefit too.

Having this visual aid and 2D map will reveal questions of all participants in the early phases of the project, which will lead to more quality and faster product backlog creation.

This will allow you as a Project Manager to keep on top of trade-offs and manage features and the project objective.

Communication helps define projects with ease

5. Visualisation of the entire Roadmap

A story map can focus the stakeholder and team to see a snippet. It can reduce that 200-page word document of completed tasks, or charts of completed tasks to a visual map of completed sprints and planned development.

The focus is smaller and the stakeholder can visually understand the requirements being delivered in the first release, second release and subsequent releases. The stakeholder can pay more attention to the relevant requirements (and requirements always change).

The customer can see the first release and following releases at a glance

The customer here can see the current release and the solving of an issue, but can also tell at a simple glance that the “even better mega solution” is in the next release.

User Story Mapping can be utilised in a multitude of ways. Project Managers can step in and compliment their planning with a digital version of User Story Mapping and work with the team, developers, customers, and even users for feedback.

If you want to learn more about building a project we recommend “easily testable” to “useable” then to “loveable” rather than building a broken bike in all stages. Read more in our Idea to MVP.

If you wish to learn more about FeatureMap check out our Intro to Story Mapping – RoadMap.

Intro to Story Mapping – Product Roadmap

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A story user map can be used as a method for visually outlining your roadmap for your product.

We started this intro to story mapping with a basic run down and a simple exercise taking you through the morning tasks and making a map. Now we will look at how to outline your roadmap. Also don’t forget to check out some good practises in going from Idea to MVP.

If you are following the intro, you’ll have looked at how to outline your feature definition.

In our case study we are going to look at “Movie Buddy”. The Initial MVP was to generate an app which could be used to manage your DVD collection.

The first step is to identifiy your main goal, in this case it was “Manage my DVD Collection”

The next layer introducing tasks and we identified 4 main features.

  • Add a DVD to my collection
  • Browser DVDs in collection
  • Find a DVD in collection
  • View/Edit DVD info

From here we were able to fill in further details for each card in our first sprint.

Movie Buddy first MVP

The horizontal sprint delimits the first iteration we implemented from stories,  from ideas and how we chose to postpone features for a further iteration. We chose to implement the backbone for the main features and come back later to add details and fine-tunings.

From here we moved to the next step and that was expanding our features. You can see we have expanded a colum to the right (in green.)

We wanted to introduce a social element, a movie recommendation feature.

Now to add cards to this next sprint we needed a new horizontal layer, so adding sprint 2 (in purple) this allowed us to identify what improvements we wanted to add to our core back-bone features.

Expanding to sprint 2

You can see how with each new column of improvements and with each deployment of your application (or version) you can develop and expand your application using a simple user story map.

At a glance you can see which features are implemented, or which features are set to be implemented down the road.

In this example it was decided that the “Get Movies Recommendations” section was a good hit and so the idea was expanded. In addition our users wanted to expand our core backbone and introduce scanning of barcodes of DVD’s to identify it in our database.

We realised we could scan DVD’s by barcode, but taking photos of the cover would need extra work so we seperated the sprints, in addition we also wanted to improve our management of favourite directors/actors by allowing recommendations on directors but that would take time. This was also added to the later sprint.

Moving features down to another Sprint

This left us with our final idea and roadmap for the coming development cycles.

Notes

 

When designing a roadmap from your MVP it is okay to place down expanded ideas and the best features you can imagine. A user Story Map is designed to allow you to see the overall roadmap, the big picture, the ideal application.

Taking that application can then allow you and your team to arrange the features, arrange the sprints, split the application up to version and settle, together, with an ideal roadmap.

We have the MovieBuddy Map here if you want to see the completed MovieBuddy Map.

Intro to Story Mapping – Feature Definition

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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 understanding for the individuals of a team.

We started this intro to story mapping with a basic run down and a simple exercise taking you through the morning tasks and making a map. Now we will look at how to define features in a product.

When you first start off it is best to have an idea of the ideal product, but have not yet started on your product roadmap. Instead start with the user’s normal workflow (minus the app or software) and figure out how to translate that flow into a product experience.

Below I have outlined an example case study of arranging a conference with the persona of the organiser and board member.

The team sat down and exchanged tasks, goals and ideas. We then started to construct a story map based on the conference organiser’s first set of responsbilities and workflow.

Conference Organiser Workflow

After the initial workflow you will notice the goal at the top linked to the persona.

The main activities are in the first row, divided into further tasks in each column which details each activity.

On a card we have further detail such as:

Detail on a card with checklist

After we established the conference organiser’s tasks we then expanded the story map to include the expanded responsibilities and workflow of the entire Team.

Workflow of the organiser and speakers

With this map now completed we can see the user workflow and what features we need defined.

Check out our completed map.

Next from this map we can develop and build a product roadmap.

Check in next week and have an introduction to designing our first MVP roadmap. Also check out from idea to MVP, a seperate article about building from the idea to the MVP.

Quick intro to Story Mapping

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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”.

The StoryMap of Alex’s Morning
  1. Start with the goal.
    What is the story map about?
    What are you trying to accomplish?
    The main overall purpose.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Feature Definition

Product Roadmap