Transform your Requirements Process from Delivery to Discovery with Story Mapping

1. STORY MAPPING
Product Camp Austin 11

3. User Story Mapping is an an
approach to Organizing and
Prioritizing user storiesTechnique by Jeff Patton

4. Challenges with One
dimensional backlogs
• Do you understand
the workflow?
• Are you able to see
the relationship of
larger stories to
child stories?
• How do you validate
that your backlog is
complete?
• What context do you
use as a context for
prioritization?

5. We want to Shift the Process from a
Requirements Delivery Process…
False Assumptions:
1. The customer knows what he wants
2. The developers know how to build it
3. Nothing will change along the way

6. …To a Requirements Discovery
Process
Reality:
1. The customer discovers what he wants
2. The developers discover how to build it
3. Many things change along the way

7. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

8. What were all the things you did to get
ready to be here today?
Starting from the moment you woke up until
you arrived here
Write one item per Post-it note

9. In a small group (3 to 5 people) merge these post-its
into a single model
Arrange them left to right in an order that makes sense
to the group
Eliminate duplicates
Cluster items that seem similar and create labels for the
clusters if items seem to go together

10. User tasks are decomposed into
smaller tasks and organized into
activities

11. User tasks make ideal user
stories

12. User Story Mapping is
Collaborative & Fosters Co-
Ownership

13. User Story Maps help us see
things from a user’s perspective

14. With User Story Mapping you can
test for Gaps by Walking the Map

15. The user story map contains two
important anatomical features
The backbone
The walking skeleton

16. Reading the activities across the
top of the system helps us
understand end-to-end use of the
system.

17. User Story Mapping helps you
Prioritize with Context

18. User Story Maps help us plan
releases in complete and

19. How do you think you could benefit
from User Story Mapping?