How well do you think your product team takes what they learn from their users and puts it into the next iteration of the product? How well does your team come to a common understanding of what the next iteration of the product will look like and then build a product that reflects that common understanding? These two problems — improving your product with user research and effective team collaboration — can both be solved with a design tool called User Story Mapping.

1. BUILD EXPERIENCES NOT FEATURES:
User Story Mapping at IBM
Jim Kalbach
mural.co
@mural
#remotedesign #remotework

2. The hand-off
Design thinking to agile
implementation should be a
smooth transition …
When it goes well it’s seamless but when
it doesn’t, it can be problematic for
everyone involved.
image source: http://www.digitalistmag.com/files/2014/04/272432_l_srgb_s_gl.jpg

3. What it should be
image source: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/04/27/design-thinking-will-fix-design-thinking/

4. What it oftentimes turns into
image source: https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/04/27/design-thinking-will-fix-design-thinking/

5. Here’s the problem.
Eric and I noticed a few of things:
• gap between design’s user research and the
development work in the finished product
• teams come to hills workshops, generate
alignment, but shared understanding of the work to
be done for the current release quickly gets lost
• design leads felt compelled to drive their teams to
develop hills but had no way to break them down
into actionable work

6. There’s a gap between user research and development work
• We have hills … now what?
• We have hills … how do we act on them?
• We’ve done all this research … how do we use it to
impact the product?
Uncertainty turns to inactivity

7. There’s a gap between user research and development work
Inactivity turns into teams saying …
Let’s just put these hills back on the
shelf and forget about them for now.
We don’t have time to map this stuff out,
can’t we just have a product lead figure this
out and share it in a Word doc?
OR

8. Product teams need something to bridge the divide
YOU

9. User Story Mapping can be the bridge
User Story Mapping
YOU

10. User story mapping explained
User story mapping takes a
measured approach to
decomposing hills.
At its core, we break down hills by simply
asking ourselves, “what does the user
need to do to get this done?”

11. • Represented as a tree
• Starts with an overarching vision
• Basic structure:
What’s it look like?
achieved by accomplishing goals.
broken down into individual user stories.
completed by performing tasks.
reached by completing activities.
is the smallest increment of the process.

12. User story mapping visualized

13. User story mapping benefits
• Visual presentation of your backlog
• High-level view of work being done in the current release
• Improved collaboration between stakeholders
• Prioritized work based on collaborative goals
• More accurate story sizing
• Simplification of the product road map
• User stories easily become GitHub issues for design and
development sprints
User story mapping has a lot to offer.

14. User story mapping in action
We piloted user story mapping
with our Continuous Release
and Delivery Insights teams.
Examples you see today come from our
work with them.

15. Delivery Insights was facing a
number of challenges when we
approached them to do user
story mapping.
• Customers asking for different insights for
different use cases
• Lack of clear direction from previously
written hills
• Teams weren’t communicating about the
work they were doing.

16. Before
So how can my team incorporate this?
Let’s talk about how to run a working session
with your team.
1. Get stakeholder buy-in
2. Know the user – have a validated persona
3. Know what the user is experiencing – have a defined as-is
4. Know what you want to do for the user – have a draft of hills

17. Getting stakeholder buy-in
Set up two meetings with key stakeholders:
1. Introduce the topic and explain the use and benefits
2. Have them spend 15-20 minutes trying the exercise
 Researcher / design lead
 Offering Manager
 Dev Lead
Bare minimum stakeholders
Meeting topics

18. Selling stakeholders on user story mapping
Created by Continuous Release team stakeholders
during separate 15-minute sessions

19. Know the user – the validated persona

20. Know what the user is experiencing – the as-is
You can’t make life better for your user without
knowing their journey.
Created by Delivery Insights after realizing they
weren’t focus on the right user.

21. Know what you want to do for the user - pre-workshop hills

22. During
1. Revisit and refine pre-workshop hills
2. Draft a to-be scenario including user stories
3. Refine workshop hills
4. Refine the to-be scenario and user stories
5. Refine hills one last time
6. Create a Golden Thread
So how can my team incorporate this?
By this point you’ve done 50% of the work.
Pro tip: Workshops can be done in-person or remotely.

23. Delivery Insights’ workshop hills, v1
Before After

24. Delivery Insights’ to-be scenario & user story map, v1

25. Delivery Insights’ workshop hills, v2
Before After

26. Delivery Insights’ to-be scenario & user story map, v2

27. Delivery Insights’ final workshop hills
Before After
By the end, one hill became two separate hills.

28. Delivery Insights’ Golden Thread draft

29. After
You’ve done the pre-work and your workshop
was a success, but you’re not quite done.
1. Validate the Golden Thread with users
2. Finalize hills, epics and stories with stakeholders
3. Add finalized work into GitHub backlog for release planning
So how can my team incorporate this?

30. Delivery Insights’ Golden Thread shown to users

31. Delivery Insights’ Validated Golden Thread

32. Add finalized work into GitHub backlog

33. Workshop DOs and DONTs
Learn from our mistakes by remembering these
key takeaways.
• Don’t allow unvalidated personas from any stakeholder.
• Do your user research. Your success depends on it!
• Do get a facilitator. You need to focus on helping your team.
• Don’t worry about perfection. It’s supposed to be iterative.

34. Long-term outcomes
Design can use the Golden Thread to make a
case for working one or more iterations ahead
of development.

35. Where does User Story Mapping fit into the continuous release cycle?

36. APPENDIX

37. Sources
https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/user-story-
mapping/9781491904893/
https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/story-mapping-visual-way-building-
product-backlog
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/04/27/design-thinking-will-fix-design-thinking/
http://www.digitalistmag.com/files/2014/04/272432_l_srgb_s_gl.jpg