Story Mapping for Beginners - Part I

Story Mapping...wow what a wonderful topic to discuss.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, and take this as an opinion from a friend, you could be agreed with it or disagreed; but please use this material in order to support the Business Analyst Activities.

"Story Mapping is a tool that helps to avoid unnecessary features and build the right product" (M. Fowler).

"Keeps everybody focussed on the users and their experience, having, as a result, a better product" (J. Patton).

Definition

Please, keep in mind that Story Mapping is a handy method to have a full view of a solution, which should be defined iteratively in multiple cycles. It's great to represent the MVP of a product through the validation and feedback from the user of the most relevant functional and non-functional artifacts to implement. The outcome will be a visual way to reflect the iterative work in the MMP. (Minimum marketable product)  

Some of the main benefits of the story mapping are, among others, the following:

Visual of the “Whole”: Use story mapping gives a holistic visual and space to think on how things fall in place.

Gap analysis: Teams can spot the missing pieces of the puzzle in the solution and can spend time on building answers.

Sequencing: Teams can move stories around on the user story wall to determine the sequence of the process that an end-user will feel. Moreover, this enables the team to decide the MUST have stories that get the business intent delivered incrementally.

Priority: This is a critical outcome of the user story mapping session. The ability to sequence and determine what minimally needs to be built. So that there can be a precise determination of priority enables the team to create detailed user stories, as well as develop the user stories just in time.

Avoid waste: Teams avoid gold-plating or building unnecessary features as a result of prioritization as they get a deeper appreciation of the whole solution that needs to be built.

Big Picture: Every participant will have a better understanding of the big picture, which leads to a better conversation between product and IT teams.

Shared understanding: Story mapping enhances the shared knowledge of each of the features and user stories for all participants. Everyone can connect the dots for how the smallest element (user story), maps to features, the releases, and the overall product roadmap.

This article will continue in the second part...