Creating user story maps
Product managers require high amount of collaboration to come up with product specifications. An effective way of managing and brainstorming product requirements is user story maps.
What are user stories?
User stories are simple descriptive explanation of how a feature or a product should work from a user perspective. It serves as stepping stone for any new product or requirement to take shape. User stories often capture the ‘Why’, ‘Who’ and ‘What’ of the product requirement. My preference in writing user stories is to start with a ‘Why?’ (inspired by Simon Sinek’s — Start with a Why).
Starting with a ‘Why’ gives a clear perspective to anyone who reads the story as to why this feature is important and it becomes the backbone of the feature.
Key points to remember while writing user stories
- Users come first — Highlight the needs of the user in simple descriptive words
- Keep it Concise — The story needs to be concise and clear
- Quantifiable — Easy to measure or gauge what the user needs are
A key thing to remember while writing user stories is to avoid using complex terms and always try to keep the sentences short. The story must grab the attention of the reader and provide a visual clarity of the user requirements.
What are user story maps?
User story maps provide a birds eye view of the product requirements. Its a great visualisation of user journey which helps in product backlog grooming and planning MVP’s.
The 4 components of User story maps are:
- Personas — Who is the user for this feature
- Epic — These are large user stories which can be broken down into smaller user stories that has a common goal or objective
- Story — Small lightweight user requirements. This often resides within an Epic
- Sprint — It is a time boxed period when the team works on Epics or a set of user stories to complete a goal
User story maps are extremely helpful to provide a quick and easy view of your product backlog for any new feature or product. Since I work with remote teams, I am often in search of tools which support remote collaboration for backlog grooming and laying out user stories to chalk out MVP’s. Cardboardit is one such tool which helps with a fun collaboration with teams. This tool helps in whiteboarding the product’s entire set of user stories in the form of maps. They offer a trial version and it is a very quick sign up process. Once in you can create your user story maps just by drag and drop.
In order to explain the user story mapping better, I will use an example of food delivery application since everyone can relate to it quickly. Let me break it down into the 4 components of the user story map
Persona: Shirley, 34 year old working mom, who loves to try different cuisines
Epics: What does Shirley do when she is hungry?
- Searches for different restaurants
- Adds the items she wants to eat into the cart
- Makes payment
- Once food arrives, leaves a feedback
Stories: Now break down each of the above Epics into different stories. I have included a screenshot above that shows how the stories are derived from the epics
Sprints: Finally the team has to come together and decide on what are the must haves for the MVP. Pick the most important and urgent needs of the user and add it to the version 1.0 of your release. The subsequent requirements will be further prioritised and added into version 1.1 and so on.
Here is the complete view of the user story map and how the user needs have been translated to the MVP, giving a clarity to the product team and the rest of stakeholders.
Tip: Use different colour post its for Epics and user stories to give a visual clarity to your teams.
Conclusion: User story mapping is a great planning tool for your product development. It helps in quickly identifying the user needs and prioritise effectively to deliver MVP. It is a recommended tool in Agile lean methodology.
References: User Story mapping by Jeff Patton https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/User_Story_Mapping.html?id=LohyBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
