This is a document that defines a series of steps that can be used to help teams/groups story map their products and plan their releases

1. Story Mapping Workshop
Facilitator’s guide version 1.1
Vasco Duarte,
Based on:
https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/story-mapping-visual-way-building-product-backlog

2. Prerequisites: preparing the workshop
• Stakeholders
• Gaining buy-in
• Who to involve?
• What needs to be ready as input before the
workshop starts
• Material for the workshop

3. Prerequisites: Stakeholders 2/2
• The critical task for the facilitator is to help the participants in
the workshop define the list of stakeholders that need to be
involved.
• With the “owners” of the workshop (typically the Product
Owner team) brainstorm the possible stakeholders and classify
them in the following categories
– Needs to buy-in to the outcome of the workshop
– Needs to approve the outcome of the workshop but gets advice from
other stakeholders
– Needs to know of the outcome of the workshop but not involved
– Needs to be involved but does not approve the outcome

4. Prerequisites: Stakeholders 2/2
• Once the stakeholders are identified, agree with the
workshop “owner” who will contact the stakeholder to
gain the level of support necessary

5. Prerequisites: Gaining buy-in
• Together with the workshop “owner” define your approach to
gain buy-in to the participation in the workshop. Consider the
following interest groups when defining who needs to buy-in
and participate:
– Stakeholders (see previous slides)
– Development teams
– Surrounding teams (either providers or customers to our work)
– Product Owners and Product Management
– Management (e.g. line management)
– Users (if you have direct access to potential or existing users)

6. Prerequisites: Who to involve
• From the list of Stakeholders and people that you need to get Buy-in from
agree on what is the list of people to participate in the workshop
• Note that for an effective workshop you should have people who
understand the user/problem and decision makers, however having too
many people will make the workshop very hard to facilitate
• Rule of thumb: 1 facilitator for every 10 participants
• Rule of thumb: to complete the workshop in 1-day (about 6 hours) do not
involve more than 15 people. If you have more time (2-day workshop is
possible) then feel free to increase the participant list. However, have
enough facilitators to be able to help the participants as they need support.

7. Prerequisites: What needs to be ready
as input to the workshop?
• Vision: before you start the workshop, you should have a clear definition of
the Vision for your product or business or both.
• Lack of a Vision will make the workshop diverge from story mapping to
Vision discussions which may be necessary, but are not part of this
workshop.
• For guidance on how to get to a Vision, please see the Vision workshop
facilitator’s guide (available on request)
• Empathy map for the highest priority users: in a separate session list, and
prioritize the possible users for the system. In the first User Story Mapping
workshop select only one user. Create the empathy map for that user and
bring it into the workshop as input for the discussions.

8. Prerequisites: Material for the workshop
1/2
• The following material is considered a minimum for the workshop. Feel free to
add/change the list to fit your needs.
• Post-its
– Large post-its in 3 or more colors
– Regular rectangular post-its in all available colors (at least 5 different colors
• Markers
– Sharpies for writing on smaller Post-its
– Permanent markers to write on larger Post-its
– Whiteboard markers to write on the white board as you explain the ideas of the workshop
and to allow for brainstorming on whiteboards
• Food
– The workshop can get pretty intense and you may not want to break the flow of the
participants. In this case it is imperative to have some food available so that people can
keep their energy level and avoid irritated conversations

9. Prerequisites: Material for the workshop
2/2
• Laptop, etc.
– In order to share information (slides) as well as to allow just-in-time
research, have a laptop with internet connection and projector available
at all times.
– Have a list of stakeholders with their phone numbers just in case we
need to ask critical questions from them during the workshop
– Flipcharts, see below for tips on how to use Flipcharts
– Have a kitchen timer with you so that you can timebox the multiple
sessions during the workshop

10. Overview of the Agenda
This is a proposed agenda for the workshop. Feel free to modify based on your
time availability. The agenda below is the recommended 1-day workshop
agenda.
• Introduction
• Story Mapping explained: why and what it is
• Goals: what are the users’ goals?
• Activities: what do users already do to achieve their goals
• Tasks: what will the users do with our system to complete their activities?
• User Stories: Writing down vertical, value centric user stories based on the
tasks the users need to complete
• Release Plan: The last exercise of the workshop is to define the next 2-3
releases. Goals for the releases will align the functionality to be taken into
that release

11. Workshop Agenda Outline
• Introduction
• Why Story Mapping
• Users (prioritizing users)
• Goals (for users)
• Activities (to achieve Goals)
• Tasks (to complete activities)
• User Stories (to enable Tasks)
• Release Plan (goals and timeline for releases)

12. Visualising the whole product
• User Story mapping builds holistic view of the
product
• Creates alignment in the team
• Uncovers product features
• Details product functionality
• Allows for release-by-release prioritization
User Story Mapping is a Strategy-to-execution
transition activity

13. Brainstorming guidance – this guidance is useful for
all the activities in the workshop
Every activity in the workshop will have a Brainstorming and a
Crystalizing step. This follows the basic idea of
1. Explore the problem/area
2. Agree on what is the problem or area you need to tackle
The goal with this 2-step approach to creating the content in the
workshop is designed to first help people collaborate on
generating multiple ideas thereby creating diversity. Then, to get
to an agreement (definition or decision) that will help the team
work together effectively after the workshop as they will always
be able to refer to the agreements made in the workshop.

14. Step 1 – Users
• Who are our most
important users?
– Brainstorm
– Explain
– Prioritize
Example to define a user: User Persona

15. Step 2 - Goals
• What are the most
important goals for each
user
– What do they want to
achieve?
– Goals exist even if the system
does not
– Goals are typically related to
business

16. Step 3 - Activities
• Activities are high level actions
that users take to achieve their
goals
• Activities are things the users do
even if our system would not
exist (e.g. using another, similar
system)

17. Step 4 - Tasks
• Tasks are the detailed actions
that take the users, step-by-
step towards the completion
of an activity
• Tasks are detailed actions the
user needs to do to achieve an
activity by using an actual
system (e.g. our future system
or another existing system)

18. Guidance on creating user stories
The User Story step in the workshop is not a “mandatory” step.
This can be done at a later stage by the Product Owner team and
review that with developers.
Another alternative approach is to have only Activities and Tasks in
the Product Backlog and let the teams (with their Product Owner)
write the User Stories “just-in-time”.
As the Activities and Tasks represent the User view of the goals
and the system, the User Stories are not needed before
implementation needs that level of detail. The User Story map
until the Task level is sufficient to drive an overall system Backlog.

19. Step 5 – Generating User Stories
• User stories are how we decompose the Tasks into deliverables from the
software point of view.
• We generate User Stories based on the Tasks we uncovered.
• Each User Story is an option, not a step in an immutable sequence

20. Guidance on explaining User Story
Maps
The slides below provide a visual explanation of
what User Story maps could look like.
However it is important to take a first cut at the
map without trying to follow all the visualization
ideas presented here. The conversation during
the workshop is much more important than the
actual details of how to visualize the content. The
team will typically reach an agreement of how to
visualize the content created in the workshop.

21. Putting it all together

22. Putting it all together (the BIG picture)

23. Big picture explained
• Columns: Goals
• Rows:
– Activities (first row)
– Tasks and User Stories
• Row groups / layers:
– Releases (where lower means later, higher means
earlier)
– Priorities (where lower means lower priority)

24. Define the Release Plan
• The Story Map is the overall deliverable we must complete.
However we must show progress to our stakeholders in a
consistent basis.
• Define 2 to 3 releases in 1 to 3 month increments.
• The goals for these releases should reflect:
– Priorities for market tests and technology risks
– Priorities for goals should reflect the overall stakeholder expectation for
the product/system under development
• Once the timeline and release goals are defined
– Move into each release “swim lane” the tasks that need to be possible
with each release. Do the same for the associated User Stories where
appropriate

25. Tips on running the workshop
• Timebox every exercise
• Use flipcharts to make the story map
“modular” and expandable

26. Tips on running the workshop
• Timebox every exercise
• Use flipcharts to make the story map
“modular” and expandable

27. Tips on running the workshop: Use flipcharts
to create modular story map
• As we create and iterate the story map we will come back to previous
Activities and detail them further, or we will come up with Activities that
change the story map. In order to avoid having to move large amounts of
post-its we can use flipcharts to be “sections” of the map.
• These flipcharts can then be easily moved or more added at the right spot in
the map.
• Later the flipcharts will also help us move the map around. This way we can
create the map in a large meeting room and later move it to the team space

28. Example pictures from model workshop: discussion around the story map
created during the user story mapping session

29. Example pictures from model workshop: Empathy map created for the
selected high-priority user of the system

30. Example : story map with the “blue release line” as the cut line for
Release 1 and Release 2

31. Example : The goals list is pre-pended to the user story map to clarify
what the release lines are about
Release 1
Dec ‘16
Integrate with Stripe
Release 2
Feb ‘16
Integrate Shopping cart
Release 3
Mar ‘16
Add support for German