The ins and outs of user story mapping

The end user should be the priority of any development team. By anticipating user needs and preferences, you can create a better experience for your users and encourage continued use of your product. But how do you start? 

User story mapping could be the answer. This article will teach you how to build user story maps and use them to plan a more effective user experience. 

Let’s get started!

What is a user story?

A user story is a short, simple description of a product feature from the perspective of the person who wants to use the new feature, usually a user or customer. 

A user story typically follows this formula: 

As a [type of user], I want to [action/function] in order to [benefit].

For example, a user story might say, “As an email user, I want to be able to search my email by keyword so that I can quickly find the information I'm looking for."

What is user story mapping?

User story mapping visualizes user stories, outlining how users interact with a product and showing how those user needs can be accomplished within a sprint. Product managers rely on user stories as a compass to keep everyone on the right track through development. Production members utilize user story mapping to understand what the customer wants from the product and how they wish to interact with or use it. In this way, user story mapping offers an alternative to a simple product backlog list, providing a more dynamic visual and strategic tool for product planning and development. 

As you can see in the user story map example below, user story mapping breaks the user story into the user’s component actions and behaviors, making it easy to see what features and functions need to be built or updated to meet the user’s needs. Visualizing these steps into user activities and tasks, developers can more easily map the user workflow and prioritize their work accordingly.

The customer-focused approach of user story mapping leads to more satisfied customers because the development team considers their needs from the beginning.

Why use story mapping?

User story mapping offers the following benefits to help teams build a product or service that users will enjoy.

• Prioritizes work: Because user mapping provides teams with a holistic view of the user experience, team members can easily identify essential tasks and organize work into sprints or releases.

• Determines the correct requirements: Backlog items can quickly balloon without any requirement constraints. Story mapping determines the correct size for product requirements and then allows you to break down large projects into the right size for your teams.

• Puts an emphasis on user value: By building the story from the user’s perspective, the development team identifies how users interact with the product and what requirements need to be met to facilitate those interactions.

• Highlights roadblocks and dependencies: User story mapping illuminates any risks, issues, or problems, as well as dependencies to address, by providing a high-level view of the product. Mapping saves time by helping teams anticipate and address potential problems before they arise.

• Ensures team unity: True to its name, user story mapping creates a map that the team agrees on and follows throughout the build. The team can refer to the map any time they are unsure of where to go next.

• Allows for constant improvement: A well-defined user story map groups stories by priority, which, in turn, can be batched out in iterations to gather feedback earlier in the process and make improvements as the project moves forward.

Who is involved in user story mapping?

There’s no set rule about who must be involved in user story mapping, as this is largely determined by the project and the team working on it. In general, though, when thinking about who should collaborate on the user story map, it’s useful to consider the following people and teams:

• UX/UI

• Product managers

• Sales teams

• Marketing

• Customer service and support teams

• Engineering teams

• IT 

• Legal department

• Finance teams

How to make a user story map

To begin the process of user story mapping, the development team first decides how to format their story map. In Lucid, you can tailor a user story mapping template or use sticky notes to collaborate in real time and document your brand’s specific user stories in a shared place.

Follow these steps to write a clear and helpful user story.

1. Understand your users

Who do you see as the primary audience for your product? While there may be several different types of users, identifying the primary audiences will keep development on the right track to deliver a successful product. 

Focus groups and A/B tests can provide insight into what your users do when interacting with your product. When planning a new project, look at past results along with industry research to make sure you’re putting the user first.

2. Identify the problem

What problem is your service or product helping the customer overcome? Keep a user-first mindset during this step to visualize how the end user will experience the product. If you’re stuck on how to convey this information, remember the format given earlier: “As a user, I want to [the action], so that [the benefit] happens.”

3. Map user activities

Interaction with your product will come in the form of user activities. These activities act as anchor points as you create your user story map. Under each activity, a series of user stories creates the larger customer journey. 

4. Prioritize 

After you identify and map out user activities and their corresponding stories, the production team can start prioritizing user stories. Rank stories vertically from most important to least important to help the production team understand which stories have the most impact in the customer journey. 

5. Identify roadblocks

As the user story map takes shape, the team may begin to spot areas of missing information, bottlenecks, or other issues that might slow down production. Use this step to identify solutions and workarounds.

6. Plan the sprint

All the mapping work culminates in the project planning phase. After user activities and stories are prioritized, they can be batched out into sprints, where each piece of the user story map is assigned to a member of the production team with a clear explanation of how it should be completed.

Challenges of user story maps (and how to overcome them)

Running into problems? Here are some common challenges associated with user story maps, along with some tips to address them.

• Your map is too generic or too detailed: There’s a happy medium in how much detail to include. If your team isn’t on the same page, you might not have enough detail, and you need to add more until everyone is aligned. If your team is becoming confused, then the steps are too detailed. Use simple language to minimize the risk of becoming too detailed.

• You don’t know your users: If you don’t know who your users are, you can’t make a map for them. Use demographic data to understand who’s using your product.

• Your map is out of date: Creating a map on a cloud-hosted environment makes it easy to update anytime, anywhere.

• You don’t know why your product exists: This is a big problem. If you don’t know what problem your product solves, you can’t build a story map to determine how to solve it.

Next steps after user story mapping

Once the user story mapping exercise is complete, relevant stakeholders will usually review the mapped activities and stories. Remember that nothing is set in stone—you can and should make changes where needed. After all involved parties have agreed on a final user story map, the production team can begin development.

To get started, you can leverage any of the following diagrams and processes:

• Quality function deployment: Develop a framework focused on addressing customer needs with this methodology.

• Product backlog: Take a look at what you have in the pipeline for projects and identify levels of priority.

• Product roadmap: What are your product goals for the future?

• Scrum or Kanban boards: Visualize which employee is in charge of which task, clarifying what’s in progress, complete, and still to do.

• Customer journey mapping: Take a closer look at the customer journey to guide decisions for the product or the business at large.

User story mapping is a useful practice to visualize what work needs to be executed on first to create the most effective end product. The end user is the focus throughout the entire process, with an emphasis on multiple iterations and incorporating feedback. An effective user story map is fluid and can be updated as the project needs change or new stakeholders are introduced. 

And there you go! You have your guide to getting started with user story mapping.