User  Story  Mapping    Help  Your  team  focus  Beyond  the  Weeds  

Tarang  Patel|  Agile  Transforma7on  Leader,  Adobe  Systems,  Inc.  

@nevasha      h*ps://www.linkedin.com/in/nevasha  

Who  am  I?  • Agile  Transforma;on  Coach  &  Trainer  at  Adobe    • Cer;fied  Scrum  Trainer    • More  then  30  years  of  soGware  &    hardware  systems  development    experience  in  U.S  &  U.K    •  Father  of  a  teenage  daughter  &  care  provider  to  an  elderly  parent      

                   @nevasha                            h*ps://www.linkedin.com/in/nevasha    

Product  Backlog  

 What  are  some  challenges  with  Product  Backlog?  -  a  single  list  of  all  things  a  team  is  to  work  on  

What’s  wrong  with  this?  

Have  you  been  in  a  20/80  scrum  planning  mee;ng?  

Beyond  20/80  planning  mee;ng  

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Mission  Control  We  have  the  requirements!  

 h*p://cakewrecks.com  

Sharing documents isn’t shared understanding How is this for shared understanding

What’s  the  story  here?  

Story  Mapping  

What  were  all  the  ac;vi;es  you  did  to  get  here  today?  

§ Start:  From  the  moment  you  woke  up  un;l  you  arrived  here  

§  Individually:  Write  one  item  per  s;cky  note  

§ First:  Go  mile  wide  and  inch  deep  –  breadth  first  then  depth  

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Story  Mapping  

At  your  table  merge  the  ac;vi;es  into  a  single  model  

§ Arrange  them  leK  to  right  in  an  order  that  makes  sense  to  the  group  

§ Remove  duplicates  without  loosing  detail  

§ Figure  out  how  best  to  fit  outliers  into  the  model  (or  not)  

Story  Mapping  

§ Tasks  that  appear  similar  and  importantly  occur  in  the  same  9me  frame  should  be  grouped  as  an  Ac7vity  

§ Assign  a  unique  name  for  each  ac;vity  and  place  this  

Task

Workflow  sequence  

Activity

Task

Task

Task

Activity Activity Activity

Task

Task Task Task Task

Task

Task Task

Task

Story  Mapping  

Move  tasks  that  are  not  cri;cal  “below  the  line”  

Task

Workflow  sequence  

Activity

Task

Task

Task

Activity Activity Activity

Task

Task

Task

Task

Task Task

Task

Task Task

Task

Task Necessity  

Low  

High  

Example  Story  Map  for  an  email  applica7on  

User  Tasks  (user  stories)  

Logical  Releases  

User  Ac;vi;es  (themes/epics)  

Gotcha:  This  is  not  your  feature  list  with  technical  components  broken  out  !  Think:  user’s  view  of  how  they  use  the  system  

Benefits  of  Story  Maps  

Story mapping is collaborative and fosters shared ownership

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Benefits  of  Story  Maps  

Story mapping helps us see the system from the user’s perspective.

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Different  colors  for  different  user  types  

Benefits of Story Maps

Story mapping helps us identify gaps by “Walking the Map”

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A  story  map  for  a  reasonable  sized  system  can  fill  a  room

Story mapping helps with the shared understanding

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Story  Map  Format  Large  Ac7vity  

Epic    

 Big  Story  

Steps  User  takes    

Small  Stories  Details  in  the    

 steps  

   

Viable  Release  

Backbone  

§  Mapping your stories helps you find the holes in your thinking

§  End-to-End system view from the User’s standpoint

§  Fosters systems thinking, seeing the whole

§  Allow users, team members and stakeholders to “Walk the Map”

§  Divide the work into releases that make sense

Frame  the  Idea  First things first, as in don’t get ahead of your idea § What is it? § Why build it? § What do you expect to happen when you do? § What are the desired outcomes? § What about the users?

§ List types of users § Types of activities people would use your product | service §  If you could focus on thrilling just the one user, who would

that be?

(story)  

So  lets  Story  Map  

Story  Story  Story  Story  Story  Story  Story  Story  

Story  Story  

Story  

Story  Story  

Workflow  sequence  

Necessity  

Story  

High  

Low   Story  

Theme/epic   Theme/epic  Theme/Epic  Theme/Epic  Theme/Epic  Theme/Epic   Theme/Epic  

1.  Write domain specific User Stories 2.  Arrange in order of narrative flow from the user point of view 3.  Group items into common activites in time, Epics in the system 4.  Arrange top to bottom by order of necessity and in the process

delineate minimum viable product

Reference  User  Story  Mapping,  Jeff  Pa*on        -­‐  a  defini;ve  guide