Building shared understanding through words and pics. Efficient way to create a map to build software solution.

1. User Story Mapping
BUILDING SHARED UNDERSTANDING – GLENN MCCLURE, CSM, CSPO

3. When we share and sign off a document we may believe we
understand

4. Shared Documentation does not
equal Shared Understanding

5. Stories
• Stories are a way to
work—not a way to
document
• Stories—tokens for
good conversations
• Sometimes Big and
Blobby Things
• Think Things Through A
Bit before it’s dropped
into the PBL

6. Shallow

7. Externalize

8. Refine

9. Agreement

10. Shared Understanding

11. Words & Pics

12. Walls

13. More Walls

14. LET’S BUILD OUR MAP

15. “User Story Mapping is about having a good old-fashioned
conversation and then organizing it in the form of a map”
– Jeff Patton

19. How Will This Help?
• Mapping Our Stories Help Find Holes In Our
Thinking
• Allows you to see the big picture in your
backlog
• Gives you a better tool for making decisions
about grooming and prioritizing PBL
• Promotes a collaborative approach to
generating your user stories
• It encourages an iterative development
approach where your early deliveries validate
your architecture and solution
• Great visual alternative to traditional project
plans
• Allows you to visualize dimensional
planning and real options for your
project/product

20. Build A Story Map Exercise
• Frame the opportunity/
goal / outcome / value
• Tell the story of the product
(user steps) from left-to-right
(distill tasks into activities)
• Go back and talk about
and capture the details of
each step
• Use Value driven outcomes
to slice out release plans &
MVP

21. Frame Opportunity
• What is the big idea?
• Who are the customers?
• Who are the companies we think
would buy the product?
• Who are the users?
• Why would they want it?
• What problems would it solve for
customers and users they couldn’t
solve today?
• What benefits would they get from
buying and using it?
• Why are we building it?
• If the product is successful, how does
that help us?

22. STEP 1-Tell the Story (User Tasks)
(focus on breadth before depth)
user tasks are the basic building blocks of a story map
Create a Narrative Flow: Tell the story of the product—What are the high level tasks our users will be
doing? Write short verb phrases that say what the specific type of user wants to do. First the user
will do this, “and then” this, and then this— flow from left to right.
When your Software is completely done—ships out-Tell me about a day in the life of the people
using your product?

23. STEP 2-Identify User Activities (Backbone)
Group Distill Tasks into Activities

24. STEP 3-Explore & Fill In
Details & Options
(User Stories)
Process of Filling the Map Out:
• Start Working from the Middle (User Tasks) Out
• Keep adding more body to the map
• Feel free to rip up cards, replace cards, move cards
around
• After a while it will start to stabilize
• Move quickly to start to Visualize a UI
• Build simple paper prototype which can feed into
our Low Fidelity Mock Ups

25. STEP 4-Explore Alternative Stories-
What About?
• What specific things to users
to do here?
• What are alternative things
users could do?
• What are really cool things
users could do?
• What about when things go
wrong?

26. IDENTIFY HIGH VALUE, PRIORITY
AND RISK

27. SLICE OUT RELEASE PLAN & MVP

29. Iterate Until Viable-In each release deliver something
people can actually use

30. Concept in Lean Startup Thinking-Eric Ries

31. Incremental Strategy

32. Iterative Approach

33. Build Like An Artist

34. Development Strategy
• Opening Game
• Focus on essential features, user steps that cross
through the entire product
• Focus on things that are technically challenging,
risky
• Skip optional things users might do, complex business
rules
• Build just enough to see the product working end to
end
• Midgame
• Fill in and round out features
• Optional steps users might take
• Tougher business rules now
• Constantly testing product end to end for scalability,
performance, usability
• Endgame
• Refine our release
• More efficient,
• Improvement opportunities we couldn’t see before