Story writing and mapping

Story Writing & Mappingpresented by

Kevin Burns

1-18-2017

Kevin BurnsCoach

Org Change Agent

kburns@sagesw.com, @kevinbburns 2

My work history and experience

Peace Corp Recruitment and Public Affairs

Story of how we used technology to improve Peace Corp recruitment.

Switch from USPS to email

Switch from manual data entry to wild-card search in gopher email system and screen scraping results, an early for of ETL.

Conduct direct email campaigns when spam still meant ‘meat in a can’

How is value determined?

• Is value determined by delivery on time, on budget, and on scope?

• Are your features delighting your customers?

• Is all scope created equal?

• How do you know the value of the scope?

In a survey of 4 products, 65% of the features were rarely or never used.

How much money could have been saved if we never built them?

In the Waterfall project world, we have to ask for everything we can think of because capital will end at the end of the project. Instead we should be asking what has the most value in terms of the business outcome and/or impact and how are we going to measure it.

Traditional Process

Schedule / CadenceTeam / CostRequirements

Schedule / Waterfall Features

Agile Approach

Team / Cost

Stabilize

Variable

Jeff Patton

What do you see?

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Coveykburns@sagesw.com, @kevinbburns 11

Telephone Game – Cake Requirements

Do we all have the same

understanding?

How do we know?

User Story Mapping, Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product – Jeff Patton kburns@sagesw.com, @kevinbburns 13

Stop trying to write perfect documents

Good documents are like vacation photos

Document to help remember

Take a picture of your work to help remember

User Story Mapping, Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product – Jeff Patton

Your job isn’t to write better docs, it’s to change the world.

Can you turn your work into a Vocation?

Stories create Understanding

• Stories aren’t a written form of requirements; telling stories through collaboration with words and pictures is a mechanism that builds shared understanding.

• Stories aren’t the requirements; they’re discussions about solving problems for our organization, our customers, and our users that lead to agreements on what to build.

• 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.

Focus on User Interactions

Story mapping keeps us focused on users and their experience, and the result is a better conversation, and ultimately a better product.

Good story conversations are about whoand why, not just what.

Where to start?

• There’s always more to build than you have people, time, or money for.• The goal shouldn’t be to implement everything we can think of, rather

what is the minimal amount we should implement to achieve desired impact.

• Start with the most important user/customer.• Map for a product release across multiple teams to visualize

dependencies.

Story Mapping Mechanics

• Mapping your story helps you find holes in your thinking.• Map only what you need to support your conversation.• Reorganizing cards together allows you to communicate without saying

a word.• Focus on the breadth of the story before diving into the depth.• Use short verb phrases to capture what the user wants to do.• Scope doesn’t creep; understanding grows.• Focus on what you hope will happen outside the system to make

decisions about what’s inside the system.

Release slicing (roadmap) – MVP for release?

Don’t Prioritize Features

Prioritize Outcomes

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) defined

• The minimum viable product is the smallest product release that successfully achieves its desired outcomes.

• Minimum is a subjective term. So be specific about who it’s subjective to—because it’s not you. Be specific about who your customers and users are, and what they need to accomplish. What’s minimum to them?

• The minimum viable solution is the smallest solution release that successfully achieves its desired outcomes.

• A minimal viable product is also the smallest thing you could create or do to prove or disprove an assumption. Eric Reis – Lean Startup

• Minimum viable product experiment• Minimum valuable solution/product

What’s the Opportunity?

• What is the big idea? • Who are the customers? • Who are the users? • Why would they want it? • What problems would it solve for customers and users that they

couldn’t solve today? • What benefit would they get from buying and using it? • Why are we building it? • If we build this product and it’s successful, how does that help us?

Test your assumptions and hypothesis

• Validate that the problems you’re solving really exist.• Prototype and test with users to learn whether your solution is

valuable and usable. • Users want more than they use. (50-80% more)• Build > Measure > Learn, rinse and repeat• Development Partners (from the business) help validate your

assumptions and hypothesis• Iterate until Viable/Valuable is achieved

Bad Release Strategy

Good Release Strategy

Treat every release as an experiment and be mindful of what you want to learn.

User Story Mechanics

• User tasks are the basic building blocks of a story map.• Use the goal-level concept to help you aggregate small tasks or decompose

large tasks.• Maps are organized left-to-right using a narrative flow: the order in which

you’d tell the story.• Details, alternatives, variations, and exceptions fill in the body of a map.

“What about…?”• Activities aggregate tasks directed at a common goal.• Activities and high-level tasks form the backbone of a story map.• Use slices to identify all the tasks and details relevant to a specific

outcome.User Story Mapping, Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product – Jeff Patton

User Story Mechanics Summary

• Tasks are short verb phrases that describe what people do. • Tasks have different goal levels. • Tasks in a map are arranged in a left-to-right narrative flow. • The depth of a map contains variations and alternative tasks. • Tasks are organized by activities across the top of the map. • Activities form the backbone of the map. • Slice map to identify tasks you’ll need to reach a specific outcome.

6 Steps to Story Mapping

1. Frame the problem2. Map the big picture3. Explore users and interactions4. Slice out a release strategy5. Slice out a learning strategy6. Slice out a development strategy

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