Story Map Technique

Framing and planning techniques are crucial for successful product development. Among these techniques, Story Maps stand out as one of the most versatile and useful. Story Maps are not only useful for planning but also for ideation and design. They allow you to communicate effectively with your team and stakeholders, and they play a practical role in organizing your work.

Whether you're in the early stages of product discovery or delivering a finished product, a Story Map can be a valuable tool. In this article, we'll explore the many benefits of Story Maps and how they can help you create better products, from ideation to delivery. Whether you're a Product Manager, a Tech expert, or a Data expert, or an enthusiast you'll find something valuable in this discussion of Story Maps.

Let’s take a step back to have a better overview on product planning and development by defining User Pain Points and User Journey abstractly. User pain points are specific areas or steps in the user journey where users experience frustration, confusion, or dissatisfaction. Identifying the pain points is essential for product teams and PMs need to prioritize and address the most critical issues in their product area. Linked to these essential elements, the Product Backlog Principles need to be respected by creating a prioritized list of features and user stories that form the product backlog. This helps teams keep track of features and stories they need to develop to meet their user needs. By prioritizing items in the backlog, teams can ensure that they are working on the most critical features first, maximizing the value delivered to users.

The Story Map came into existence from the frustration of user stories having no context. Jeff Patton, one of the early Agile thinkers, was frustrated by the flat user stories backlog conveying little to no context and lacking the big picture, so he leveraged some proven UX design techniques and adapted them to Agile concepts, and introduced User Story Maps.

What is User Story Mapping?

User Story Mapping is an exercise in which a development team aims to build the best user experience by designing from the customer's perspective. It encourages teams to build something that helps users reach their goals quickly and most naturally. Many teams consider a high-fidelity user prototype and a Story Map as their go-to techniques.

How to Do User Story Mapping?

Story Maps are two-dimensional maps, in which major user activities are arrayed along the horizontal dimension, loosely ordered by time from left to right, generally in the order the user would do them. Along the vertical dimension, we have a progressive level of details and we flesh out each major activity into sets of user tasks. The critical tasks are higher vertically.

To build in practice, you need to consider these steps:

1. Have a clear understanding of why, what you’re building, and for which persona.
2. Identify the goals: Break down what users will try to do with your product. Here the objective is to start with the most common goals and work backwards.
3. Match steps to goals: Figure out what steps will bring the user to achieve the goals.
4. Detail out the tasks: Add details to each step by defining tasks which make the step realized.
5. Prioritize and organize: It is almost impossible to include every single task into your first MVP. According to the priority, you need to arrange the stories and then cut-out MVP and iterations, i.e. future releases.

A Story Map example [Source]

What are the benefits of User Story Mapping?

There are some advantages to using Story Maps. It provides a holistic view and it is more clear to consider where to draw the line to have different releases and their associated objectives. Each story has context within the Story Map. We can use the Story Map to frame our prototypes and to get feedback on our prototypes and product ideas.

The story map will serve as a living reflection of the prototypes. As we finalize our discovery work and progress into delivery, the stories from the story map move right into the product backlog [requirements for each release].

In summary, User Story Mapping is a powerful tool for Product Managers to understand user journeys, identify pain points, and prioritize features through the Product Backlog Principle. By leveraging these techniques, product teams can design and develop solutions that meet user needs and deliver maximum value.

Source: INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan