User Story Mapping

What is it

• User story mapping is a visual representation of the user journey across a product or service. It helps teams understand the functionality and prioritise development tasks, ensuring that the user's perspective and needs remain at the forefront.

Who

• User story mapping only delivers any benefit when done as a team activity. The whole core team should take part in this activity to ensure diversity and aligned understanding on any MVP candidates.

Running the technique

• Find a large wall or digital collaboration tool like Miro. Begin by outlining the backbone of your user's journey. This is a series of high-level activities or key steps the user goes through when interacting with the service.

• These are positioned sequentially from left to right, reflecting the order in which they typically occur.

• Below each high-level activity, you'll break it down into more granular tasks or sub-activities.

• Now, for each of these tasks or sub-activities, you'll develop a user story or backlog item.

• The vertical positioning of user stories under each activity can indicate priority, with higher priority items at the top.

• This helps teams understand what should be developed first to deliver the most valuable features to the user early on.

• By viewing the map, teams can group certain user stories together into logical releases or iterations. This is especially useful when determining the features for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) versus those for subsequent releases.