A human-centered approach to planning phased releases of a product or service
User Story Mapping is a dynamic exercise that teams use to gain a shared understanding of the user journey and to prioritize development efforts. It was developed by Jeff Patton and it’s an engaging process that centers around the user’s experience to create a more user-focused development process. Here's an overview of how it's commonly conducted:
Choose a Topic: The first step is to define what aspect of a product or service the team wants to explore. This should be a broad area that requires a detailed understanding of user interactions—for instance, the experience of shopping online.
Map the Main Activities: Once the topic is chosen, the team identifies the main activities or tasks that users undertake within the workflow of the topic. These are the large buckets of functionality or experience within the system, such as "searching for products," "adding items to a cart," or "checking out."
Detail the User Journey Steps: Under each main activity, the team will enumerate the specific steps that users go through. This breaks down the activity into more granular, actionable tasks. For instance, "searching for products" might include steps like "enter search criteria," "review search results," and "select product."
Map Features to Steps: After laying out the user journey, the next stage is to map features or user stories that correspond to each step. These user stories describe the functionality that will support the user’s task at a particular step. Each story is written from the perspective of the user and typically follows a format like: “As a [type of user], I want [an action] so that [benefit/outcome].”
Organize Stories into Releases: After all the stories are mapped out, the team categorizes them into releases. This involves grouping the features into sets that will be delivered over time. Each release aims to provide a workable increment of the product that delivers value to the user.
By organizing features into releases, prioritizing what is most important becomes clearer. This is usually done based on factors such as user value, business value, and technical risk or complexity.
Story mapping provides a visual aid for understanding the product from the user’s point of view, aligning development with user needs, and setting clear priorities for releases. It’s an exercise in agile planning that ensures that what is being built makes sense for the people who will use it.
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