User story mapping

Creating a two-dimensional backlog that communicates an user experience to all stakeholders

Cookbook on how to facilitate an user story mapping exercise:

Duration: 1-3 hours depending on goal/product/solution/market maturity

Participants:
 Agile coach (required)
 Product owner (required)
 SME (optional – but recommended)
 Business stakeholders (optional – but recommended)
 Development team (optional – but recommended)
 UX (optional)

Input to workshop:
 Output of Impact mapping workshop
 Prioritized user journey based on Impact mapping
 Idea about the desired goal – preferable a measurable goal/effect
 Persona’s for the users
 User scenarios from a current daily perspective

 Facilitation
o brown paper or whiteboard
o post-its – different colours and sizes
o sharpies

Activities during session:

1. Draw an x-axis and y-axis on the brown-paper

a. X-axis is the time line going from left to right
b. Y-axis is the importance/necessity
2. Gather everyone around brown paper on the wall or the white board
3. Understand the overall goal that the user wants to achieve (or that we hope to get them to
achieve)
4. Collectively go through the activities that the user/customer is expected to do in order to
reach that goal.
a. Write on post-it’s the tasks that the user needs to be able to do in order to reach
the goal
b. Present post-it’s one-by-one
c. Place post-it’s on brown paper lining them in a chronological order as well as
importance
d. From post-it’s extract the high-level user activities/tasks that the user has to go
through to achieve the goal. This is referred to as the “Backbone”
e. The high-level user tasks should tell a “story” (the blue/grey squares below)
i. “First I do this, then I do that…. And finally I do this…”
1. Example: First I go to the website. Then I search for the item. I select
the number of items I want. I add them to the shopping basket. Then
I go to the shopping basket and purchase the items. Later I track the
order.
f. Purple squares below represent the most basic set of sub-tasks that are required to
be able to use the product/reach the goal
g. The first level of stories are the “walking skeleton” representing the absolute
minimum set of features needed to be able to deliver value to the user. This is also
often considered the MVP for the product
h. Subsequently lower ranking stories can be organized into later releases, by drawing
vertical lines that stories can be moved in or out of
i. Remember to give the MVP and subsequent releases:
i. A functional “name” that can communicate the purpose of the release
ii. Assign KPI’s that should guide the tracking of progress for the release
Output of workshop and next steps:
 A user story map containing the user story “back bone” and the “walking skeleton”
 Overview of the most eminent user stories
 Shared understanding of the user needs and user journey among all participants and
stakeholders

Pro-tip:
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