Creating a backlog of user stories is pretty straightforward but it doesn’t help you when it comes to decisions like what to build first, how to prioritize and groom the backlog, how to scope and plan a project, and how to visualize overall progress. This is a big challenge for many agile teams especially when beginning a project. To do this, we need more context. Personas and story maps are tools that bring the user and their experience to life. They provide context for the work throughout the development stream. Personas generate and capture insight about the customers or users. Story maps are multi-dimensional representations of goals and activities that span the user’s experience from start to finish and become the source for our product backlog. Finer-grained user stories are born from the story map and retain context when flowing through development. This improves the value-based decision making of scoping, prioritizing, planning, and measuring progress through the entire development stream because we have context that ties back to users’ goals and experience. The session will start with what personas are and how to create them. From there, we will explore the creation of story maps as a group through a real world example. In this collaborative session, attendees will learn new tools for generating a user-centered product roadmap that goes beyond the basic backlog and becomes a solid foundation during the inception of a project.

1. © 2012 Redpoint Technologies.
All rights reserved.
Project Inceptions with Story Maps and Personas
Milwaukee Agile
Dave Neuman, Principal, Redpoint Technologies
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Confidential information.

2. Our Challenge Today
Launch a new product in 6 months or less using an Agile delivery approach
• Name:
­ TestNation!
• Product:
­ Awesome electronic test management and test taking platform for high schools
• Market:
­ Over 16M students and over 1M teachers in about 36K secondary schools
• Goals:
1. Save 1 hour of time per test for teachers in manual test creation, grading, and reporting
• 1hr x 5 tests x 1M teachers = 5M hrs x $40/hr = $200M in savings that can be spent
elsewhere
• 1hr x 5 tests x 1M teachers = 5M hrs of additional teaching of students
2. Improve quality and reliability of testing results (limit cheating and favoritism)
2

3. Our Challenge Today
Launch a new product in 6 months or less and delivery needs to be Agile
• Name:
­ TestNation!
• Product:
­ Awesome electronic test management and test taking platform for high schools
• Market:
­ Over 16M students and over 1M teachers in about 36K secondary schools
• Goals:
1. Save 1 hour of time per test for teachers in manual test creation, grading, and reporting
• 1hr x 5 tests x 1M teachers = 5M hrs x $40/hr = $200M in savings that can be spent
elsewhere
• 1hr x 5 tests x 1M teachers = 5M hrs of additional teaching of students
2. Improve quality and reliability of testing results (limit cheating and favoritism)
3
Where do we start?

4. Typical Project Inception Flow
4
Project
Charter
Delivery
Product
Roadmap
Delivery
PM
Sponsor
Product
Manager
Team(s)
Team(s)
Requirements
Sprint 0
Blitz
Planning
Sprint 0
Specs
Lean
Startup
Build a minimal
viable product
Backlog
Team
Customer
Development

5. Typical Project Inception Flow
5
Project
Charter
Delivery
Product
Roadmap
Delivery
PM
Sponsor
Product
Manager
Team(s)
Team(s)
Requirements
Sprint 0
Blitz
Planning
Sprint 0
Specs
Lean
Startup
Build a minimal
viable product
Backlog
Team
Customer
Development
Where is the customer or
user in the process?

6. Integrate User Centered Design into Project Inceptions = Success
6
Product
Visioning
User
Profiling
Story
Mapping
Agile
Delivery
Cross-functional Inception Team – Customer, users, delivery team, product/project mgmt
Delivery Teams
• Drives more user experience and product-centric design thinking before delivery begins
• Provides rich context to guide planning, feature prioritization, and development decisions
• Tools for entire team to UNDERSTAND THE BIG PICTURE
Backlog of
Features
~ 2-5 Days from start to finish
Problem / Solution
Business Model
Business Case
Project Charter
Personas
Story
Maps

7. Integrate User Centered Design into Project Inceptions = Success
7
Product
Visioning
User
Profiling
Story
Mapping
Agile
Delivery
Cross-functional Inception Team – Customer, users, delivery team, product/project mgmt
Delivery Teams
Personas
Story
Maps
• Drives more user experience and product-centric design thinking before delivery begins
• Provides rich context to guide planning, feature prioritization, and development decisions
• Tools for entire team to UNDERSTAND THE BIG PICTURE
Problem / Solution
Business Model
Business Case
Project Charter
Backlog of
Features
~ 2-5 Days from start to finish

8. Why Personas
• Needs
­ Quick way to develop a customer or user profile
­ Go beyond basic demographics
­ Develop shared understanding of users environment, behavior,
concerns, and motivations
• Positive Outcomes
­ Make the user and their experience a 1st class citizen
­ Guide decision making in business models, product roadmaps,
projects, product backlogs, UX design, etc.
8

9. Persona Development using Empathy Maps
9
Six questions to
quickly profile a
customer or user
Developed by
Scott Mathews of XPLANE

10. Let’s Profile
Profile one TestNation! user using an Empathy Map
1. 2 min – Generate list of possible users and select one to profile
2. 2 min - Individually brainstorm one comment for each question SILENTLY
3. 3 min - When everyone is ready then take turns adding comments to the map
(consolidate similar comments into one comment)
4. 3 min – Give the persona a name, read out the profile within group for confirmation
5. 10 min total
10

11. Show and tell, persona style
Would one persona please stand-up and introduce themself
11

12. User Story Maps
• A collection of user stories is a product backlog
• A user story map is an approach to ORGANIZING and PRIORITIZING user
stories using a multi-dimensional arrangement of goals, activities, and stories
• Positive Outcomes
­ Makes end to end user experience or workflow visible
­ Show relationships between larger stories to smaller stories as well as alternate
variations and alternate flows
­ Confirm completeness of the backlog
­ Context for prioritization and release planning that focuses on goals and activities
­ Team’s own visual language for big picture thinking and context
12

13. User Story Maps - Described
13
Time
Releases Priority
High
Low
Variations
Variations
User Activities
User Stories
Tell the big story of the product – a day in the life of a user
User Goals
Walking
Skeleton

14. User Story Maps – Described with examples
14
Time
Releases Priority
High
Low
Variations
Variations
User Activities
User Stories
Tell the big story of the product – a day in the life of a user
User Goals Organize
Email
Manage
Email
Create
Basic
Open
Basic
Delete
Email
Open
HTML
Create
HTML
Manage
Calendar
Mark
Read
Walking
Skeleton
Compose
Email
Read
Email
Delete
Email
Search
Email
File
Emails
Archive
Email
(begin with verbs)

15. User Story Maps - Advanced
15
Time
User Goals
User Activities
User Stories Releases Priority
High
Low
Variations
Variations
UI Mockups
Organize
Email
Manage
Email
Create
Basic
Open
Basic
Delete
Email
Mark
Read
Open
HTML
Create
HTML
Manage
Calendar
System
Action
Walking
Skeleton
Compose
Email
Read
Email
Delete
Email
Search
Email
File
Emails
Archive
Email

16. User Story Maps – Real World Example
16

17. Let’s Practice
Create a Story Map for your TestNation! solution using your persona
1. 5 min – Silent Brainstorming
• Individually brainstorm user activities SILENTLY (be sure to sequence them in order)
• Ask yourself, “How does the user X accomplish Y goal? What are the steps they
take?”
2. 10 min – Collaborative walking skeleton
• When everyone is ready then take turns placing cards on the table beginning with first
in sequence
• Consolidate similar cards into one card, throw out duplicates
• Group activities and identify the goals for those activities placing a goal card at the top
3. 5 min – Alternate pathing
• Find alternate variations by walking the process and asking, “What else could they
do?”
17

18. Walking skeleton report out
Tell us the story of your TestNation! solution
from the perspective of your persona
18

19. Wrap-up
Any questions?
Thank you!
19