Story Mapping Workshop

Overview

1 day

Story mapping is a high-impact collaborative and visual technique to

  • understand the overall set of users, their tasks, their goals, and context (all related to the product we are building)
  • connect product features to user tasks & goals
  • identify 'thin' but useful end-to-end families of product features that provide a simple but 'complete' solution for user
  • identify a minimum useful feature set (MUFS) for the next release of the product
  • do release planning, across several releases



STORY MAPS: Along with Impact Maps, this is one of the most high-impact and simple methods I have come across in years to "bridge the goal-results gap" between business goals and delivering results that actually achieve those goals, and that "bridges the communication gap" between business people and R&D, and that bridges the gap between what the user does and wants, and the products we create, and that helps see and define a minimun useful feature set for the next release.

During this workshop, I first introduce the ideas and method, and then facilitate an actual story-mapping workshop for the next release of your product/system.

Audience

This is best attended by product managers, hands-on users, subject-matter experts, and hands-on R&D team members.

Maximum Participants

15


Environment - Room, Tools

  • 1 HUGE empty wall area -- at least 5 meters long
  • packs of SQUARE stick notes (not rectangles) in a total of 3 colors
  • lots of black "Sharpie" pens
  • masking tape
  • flipchart paper
  • 1 package of regular A4 printer/copier paper
  • 1 pair of scissors