A comprehensive guide to User Story Mapping

For a software development team, the users and their needs hold utmost priority. Doing research on the target customers and anticipating their needs allows the team to develop a product that is user-friendly and provides real value. Isn’t that what the users want? Studies suggest that companies that follow a customer-centric approach rather than being product-focused tend to be more profitable and successful. 

To create a product that provides real value to users, one needs to keep everything user-centric from the beginning to the end of the project. But how do you ensure that? One thing that would help guide your team in the right direction to achieve so is User Story Mapping.

Before we begin with what “user story mapping” is and how it helps create user-centric digital products, let us first understand the concept of “user stories”.

What are User Stories?

A user story is a segment of agile development that allows the development team to understand how the product intends to add value to the end-user. User stories primarily include the target users, their end goals, the description of an interaction with the product, and the description of the key features from a user’s point of view. Alternatively, user stories are short and simple feature descriptions told from the perspective of your end-users.

Read: Job Stories vs User Stories

What is User Story Mapping?

The procedure of generating and visually depicting a user story that gives an overview of the user’s experience interacting with the product is what we call User Story Mapping. A user story map lets you organize user stories into a helpful model for understanding the functionality of a software product, detecting issues and omissions in your backlog, and planning releases that deliver value to users and create delightful user experiences.

One of the best ways to do user story mapping is by creating a visual map that consists of four levels- the user(s), user’s activities, user’s tasks, and product features (explained from the user’s perspective).

Benefits of User Story Mapping

Why is it important to have a user story map? Story maps came into the scene because single-list product backlogs were considered ineffective to organize and prioritize the work that was needed to be done. The introduction of user story mapping enabled the agile team to groom their product backlog and plan the product releases effectively. It’s an excellent method that helps build a product with features that are relevant and helpful to the target users. Let’s take a brief look at the key benefits of doing user story mapping.

1. Everyone stays on the same page

User story mapping is quite helpful for a project manager to ensure that every team member from the design and development team is aware of the project goals and understands them very well. When you design the user story map at the early stages of software development, it gets easier for the involved team members to figure out the users’ needs. The information helps them prioritize the key features.

2. Focus on User Value

When the team designs a user story map, they picture the product from a user’s perspective. When it is finally created, it helps them identify how users would get along with the product and what efforts will bring the best results. This pushes an outside-in approach to product roadmap planning.

3. Alignment among teams

Team members may often lose focus on the end user’s perspective during the initial stages of the project. Different stakeholders might come up with different requirements and tasks, which can hamper the workflow. But if you have a well-defined user story map, it might prevent conflict.

Since creating a user story map is a collaboration of different teams, it means that you all have formed a mutual agreement. Every team member shares a common understanding and awareness of the project priorities and goals.

4. User Satisfaction

If the homework is done in the way it was intended to be, you will be successful in creating a valuable and useful product, which would likely be loved by your end-users. Speaking from a business perspective, this results in faster user onboarding, improved customer retention, and higher user satisfaction.

If you don’t have a user story map, you will be risking developing a product based on assumptions as you won’t be having much solid information about the target users.

How to create a User Story Map?

Creating a user story map might be a time-consuming deal but it’s worth investing in. By mapping out the user stories visually, the software development team defines the story of the customer journey and breaks it into parts which helps them design and build the functionality that is focused on desired customer outcomes rather than on development output or feature specifications.

Here are the steps involved in a user story map process.

1. User Research

You need to collect as much information as you can about your target users to create a successful and useful digital product. Discuss with your team members what needs to be researched and the important questions that need to be addressed, such as-

• What the product is supposed to do?

• Who are the intended users of the product?

• What problems is the product going to solve?

• What benefits will it provide?

• How the product will add value to the end-users?

• How fast the features can be developed?

Make sure that everyone is involved in the process so that you have a common goal set at the end. Build a set of user personas for that matter.

2. Pay attention to the users’ needs

The next step in creating a user story map is to outline the needs of your end-users which would be marked as the product features. These features are known as “User Activities” and showcase what the user needs to accomplish. This part is very important as it provides a structure for the rest of the user story map.

Define your users’ needs by writing down the prime goals they would like to achieve through your product and focus on how they will be using your product in order to achieve them. This would help define the features and UX of your product. Once you have noted down all the important activities, prioritize them so that the team members are very well aware of how to structure the work.

3. Break Activities into Tasks

User Tasks play a crucial role in user story mapping. These are the tasks that users need to perform to complete an activity. User tasks involve specific features about your product. Break down the activities into tasks and explain them from the perspective of your users. They might be very complex or time-consuming to finish in one sprint. Put the tasks below the activities they relate to, and in an order in which your team would like to work. This would help understand how each task supports each goal.

4. Prioritize Tasks

For a user story map to appear clean and uncomplicated, it generally contains 4 activities and 8 tasks. But many times, project managers end up with more than 10 activities and over 30 tasks, which makes it quite messy. That’s why it is important for you to sort everything out. For that matter, select activities and tasks that are of the highest value for the users, and create categories for tasks. You can adjust changes in your map if you feel they are appropriate and would make it more logical, easier, and cleaner.

The final version of the user story map should provide you with an overview for finishing the project in a way that makes it truly user-centric.

But it is not like that it can’t be changed. If you discover something that may make it more relevant for the users, discuss it with your team. If they agree and the research supports the change, feel free to update it.

The Bottom Line

Creating a user story map correctly does brings success to your projects, however, if it isn’t done properly, you might fail to create a user-centric product. Some of the common user story mapping mistakes that project managers usually make are insufficient user research, creating a user story that’s highly vague, and not being able to engage the team members in the user story writing process. Avoid making these mistakes. You can only create a successful product if there is good enough research put into it and you have anticipated the users’ needs extremely well.