The quick user story mapping workshop guide
After a number of plan changes and a few burned resources, the time has finally come — we can release our mammoth project. At first the joy is great, but quickly a feeling of disillusionment sets in. With the help of the story mapping workshop, we want to prevent precisely this effect by focusing on our users.
When I started at vetevo GmbH as a UX consultant at the beginning of 2017, the company was just changing, with an ingenious idea up its sleeve. The first approaches to implementation could already be seen. Unfortunately, like many young startups, they had too many ideas and too few resources, so that they could already show a lot, but nothing functional. The golden path seemed almost endless. The team may have been small, but their ambition and belief enabled them to dream big. So, to geht the project back on track, we decided to do a user story mapping workshop. — You may ask what I mean with user story mapping workshop? Go ahead and learn more. ;)
“No story mapping without a user story, no user story without a persona”
The foundation
Before we can get impatient to write our user stories, we need our personas — on the basis of which we set up the “story mapping workshop”. To do this, you can either build on the existing personas in your company or generate new ones. For the latter you have two options.
- Create a couple of quick “Lean Personas” with the involvement of a few stakeholders
- Set up a Lean Persona Workshop for your team
The latter has the great advantage that you work out the personas together and everyone can identify with them. I will not go into a persona workshop in detail here, as I want to focus primarily on the so-called user story mapping within the article.
At the end of the day we want to work out the MVP / MVE of your project so that you get a common feeling for the coming challenges — from experience this is the moment when you first realize that the true extent of the project becomes clear. But don’t panic, from here you can quickly go uphill again, don’t be discouraged!
“The team determines the quality of the workshop, the more diversified the team, the better the result”
David Zerbe, uxactly
The user story
Before you start, you should have already defined a main user story. Make sure that you bring all relevant stakeholders — designers, developers, project managers, etc. — on board for your workshop.
“Your job isn’t to build more software faster: it’s to maximize the outcome and impact you get from what you choose to build.”
Jeff Patton
Possible actors for your workshop
Before you jump into the workshop, it is essential to clarify the relevant parties. The best workshop in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t invite the right people. Therefore, think about who should take part in your workshop beforehand and ideally plan in advance.
1–2 weeks is a good start to make sure that all relevant parties are there. Here are some inspirations for possible groups of participants from which at least one person should participate.
Developer
Always interested and skeptical, nobody knows the technical possibilities better. His insights into the feasibility and his unconditional cooperation are decisive for the project.
Marketer
Who better to know what the customer likes? He / she spends the whole day marketing the product and knows what the customer likes.
Customer service
Nobody knows the suffering of your customers better than the customer service team, so try to get them on board in any case. But keep in mind that the user often approaches him with the effect and not the cause.
Managing directors
Without C-level support, you will lack the necessary support. Even a deputy can work wonders here. At the end of the day, the best ideas and workshops won’t bring you if you don’t have the support.
Designer
The creative mind behind your product. He / she largely determines how the customer uses and perceives your product. In any case, try to have one of the designers in the company with you, whether UX, UI, IxD, consumer designer or service designer. On the one hand it is they who will work on the core and on the other hand their insides are priceless.
Product Owner
Its ultimate goal is the success of the product. He plans the backlog with you, keeps your back free and keeps the project on track. So it’s a very good decision to get him on board.
The workshop is the icing on the cake
However, the warm-up phase and the final phase must not be ignored. Plan a lot of time. On average, you don’t come out of the workshop for less than 6 hours.
For the warm-up I can recommend a “Doodle Jam” for example. Look at the project from a holistic point of view and think about which warm-up would be most efficient for the current project and team situation. It is often good to first playfully create empathy — after all, we all want the best for the project and our users.
Before we can start the workshop, it is important to define the user story (s). You can either do this in advance in order to concentrate on the actual mapping with your team on the day of the workshop, or together with them as part of the warm-up. — Always keep an eye on your target group and don’t forget who will use the service, tool, idea or product at the end of the day.
After the warm-up
So that really all participants are on the same page. Has it proven useful in my last workshops to go through the personas after the warm-up and read their user stories out loud.
Post-It Time!
We start with a little thought exercise. Tries to list all necessary tasks / tasks that the user should manage. The best way to do this is to take the individual user stories. This could look like this: “After a successful conversation with his work colleague, David wants to plan a meeting and goes to his smartphone to enter the date”. What does he need for that? For a calendar app, this could look like this:
Creation of the backbone
After you and your team have written down all the necessary tasks, we create the backbone of the story map. To do this, we group all existing pieces of paper with the team and then try to find a heading for all groups.
It is best to think of your user story and see what could be most important for the user / David.
Can the user need a list of the appointments before creating the appointment? — Probably not. 😉 In rare cases it can happen that two tasks need to be completed at the same time. To make the simultaneous process clear, you can glue the tasks together.
Into the deep
After we have set up the so-called backbone, it is a matter of going further in depth by considering what exactly we need for the respective function. It is best to go through the individual tasks together using the user story and try to identify the required building blocks on this basis.
For release planning
This step is about dividing the tasks into holistic releases. In plain language, this means that we consider which features create the greatest added value for the user.
- What are the essential features of your project?
- With which features can you build a first release to get user feedback?
In order to give users a first impression of your vision and to collect initial feedback, you should always keep in mind that the main thing is to set up an MVP.
Final sentence
You will probably think to yourself: “Yes, but I can’t break my product down in an MVP, why should people use it?”
Believe me, you will save a lot of time and nerves if you can agree on a solid MVP and throw it on the market early on.
For more information on the subject, I can recommend the book The Lean Startup. The book already gives a solid impression of the subject.
Remember that this is a digital product and you can always iterate.
At the end of the day, your user story map could look something like this. You and your team should now get a better feel for what lies ahead of you. Experience has shown that the map is helpful for the whole team to focus on the essentials.
To top it off, you or the SCRUM Master now have the honorable task of pouring the resulting tickets into a ticket system of your choice (Jira, Trello, Microsoft Planner, etc.).
