Understanding User Story Mapping & How To Use It

User stories include research work and planning. However, there is a way to send them a few extra miles and get your product ready faster. Oh yes, this can be done with the technique called user story mapping. It’s a method of taking all those user stories and organizing them in a way that makes sense, helps you work quicker, and discover issues sooner.

What is User Story Mapping?

User story mapping is a planning and visual exercise that enables a product development team to put in all the activities of a feature development backlog into action. You can consider it as a way of arranging sprint tasks.

User story mapping draws on user stories, hence the name. It uses them to take steps that represent a user persona’s journey towards accomplishing their goal and is an excellent way of structuring their development sequence. It’s a smart way to arrange user stories into sprints.

Though it doesn’t look like an actual map, it shows that the natural advancement of tasks and steps in user stories. It includes physical sticky notes or digital card columns on a whiteboard arranged into a panel or table format.

User story maps are usually aimed at product managers & development teams. But they’re also helpful for clients and other investors since the idea is to define and structure user stories into a meaningful flow for the user and the product’s business goals.

User story mapping is a useful technique as it helps conceptualize the team’s understanding of how user personalities might communicate with a product while the canvas is still blank. User story maps are similar to Sudoku puzzles; the more blanks you fill, the easier it is to solve it.

How does the User Story Mapping work?

Now that we know what it is let’s learn how to create one.

1. Define activities

Activities are the first element of your user story. Each sticky note or activity will depict a process that your user experiences in your product.

Suppose there are 3 primary activities users will perform with fictional eCommerce:

• Register

• Product Purchase

• Product Rating

We’ll write each one onto cards, and they’ll depict an activity. Under the activities, we’ll organize our epic stories and user stories.

2. Design a narrative backbone with epics

You’ll need to create epic user stories for the user story map to be meaningful. Epic user stories are like an overview of a feature, while user stories are more specific.

You should first create epics if you haven’t already done that. Epics and user stories must be in different colors for easy visual comprehension.

The activities in the example will be classified into 5 different epics:

• Register with personal information

• Add payment option

• Product search

• Product purchase

• Product rating

These epics will form a backbone and represent a left-to-right narrative along an x-axis. It’ll display a logical sequence of steps a user will take to finish each task.

3. Rank user stories in a sequence of priority

User stories are usually ranked vertically down a y-axis in a priority sequence, with the highest at the top.

Suppose we want to begin our steps down vertically for the initial phase of our epic narrative: “Register with personal information.” We might add these user stories in the below order.

1. “I want to register so that I can shop and leave feedback.”

2. “I want to choose products from a dropdown list to view only the items that interest me.”

3. “I want to register to the newsletter for exclusive deals and offers.”

Advantages of User Story Mapping

One of the primary pros of user story mapping is that it helps us picture how users would use our product in reality, therefore prioritizing feature development accordingly.

1. Shows Direction

The user story map is a smart way of showing us where to begin working on user stories. It displays any possible holes in our existing user flow or needs. It allows us to corner any information architecture issues that might emerge in our product & helps us address them early.

User story mapping is an excellent way of unraveling any possible friction the user might face. This allows us to adjust our direction at an early stage and avoid any possible problems.

2. A Proxy to the Flat Backlog

It offers a way of arranging tasks from a flat backlog rather than working from a list approach. Working with a list can cause a team to feel disconnected from the end goal because nothing is in context. It’s also tricky to get an idea of where your team is in product readiness or MVP completion. It can be an enticing alternative solution for teams that are done working with endless backlog lists.

3. A clear testing framework

Moreover, the user story mapping strategy also offers a smart framework for testing features as it portrays the features in priority order. It displays the minimum amount of features and the essential ones needed to satisfy your user needs, followed by less essential features.

4. A Proxy to Use Cases

Designing user maps is an excellent alternative to not going down the user case route. If you want to use user stories and avoid intricate use case documentation but are anxious about the absence of structure, user story mapping is an excellent solution.

The Final Take-Away

User story mapping helps create user stories that your team will have worked hard to research & create. The user story mapping can show you the following:

• The shape your product development process will form

• How to arrange feature development into sprints

• The features needed for an MVP

The concept is quite simple and easy to grasp for someone who has a fundamental understanding of how user stories and epics work. Like many techniques in UX design, there’s a potential to dig deeper. Several tools and books on this will render a practice element to help you begin with the robust technology that is user story mapping.

Author Bio:

Melissa Crooks is Content Writer who writes for Hyperlink InfoSystem, one of the top app development companies in New York, USA and India that holds the best team of skilled and top app developers. She is a versatile tech writer and loves exploring latest technology trends, entrepreneur and startup column. She also writes for top app development companies.