#118 – Story Mapping

Story Mapping is a technique that helps the Scrum Team get a holistic view of how their product and PBIs align with the user journey. By creating high-level categories of the steps that the user goes through when using the product (e.g., booking a hotel room), a full Story Map shows all known steps that a user can perform horizontally, and the more detailed specific actions of each step vertically. The team uses this overview, together with End Users, to define the scope of releases, such as the MVP.

When doing Story Mapping, try to identify as small of a scope as possible, i.e., what minimum value-add can justify a release–also, don’t plan too many releases, as they’ll probably be changed, anyway. The Story Map is not a release plan, but an indication of the next few releases based on your and your end users’ current knowledge and your collective agreement.