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Atd 2016-mapping-mashup
This document discusses story mapping and example mapping techniques for building shared understanding of products, features, and releases. It provides an overview of why early testing is important, how to ask testing questions early, and how story mapping and example mapping work. The bulk of the document outlines hands-on exercises for attendees to practice story mapping and example mapping in groups. It concludes by discussing tips for trying these techniques with teams and providing additional resources for learning more.
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Atd 2016-mapping-mashup
- 1. STORY MAPPING & EXAMPLEMAPPING MASHUP JoEllen Carter @testacious Lisa Crispin @lisacrispin
- 2. PREVIEW Techniques to buildshared understanding Product, feature, release level Story level Deliver business value frequently, at a sustainable pace
- 3. WHY TEST EARLY? Exploreassumptions Clarify expectations Identify gaps in flow Discover the ‘right thing’ to build
- 4. ASK TESTING QUESTIONSEARLY Does this thing do what I want it to do? Is the thing I want it to do the right thing to do? What are the unexpected things that can happen? What are the undesirable things that can happen? What are the happy accidents? Testing is THINKING.
- 5. STORY + EXAMPLEMAPPING
- 6. STORY MAPPING JEFFPATTON, USER STORY MAPPING Story - tells an actual story about someone doing something, and why Story Map - tells the bigger story of a product or feature We are storytellers.
- 7. WHAT IS STORYMAPPING? Organizes stories to show the big picture Goal -The thing you want to accomplish Activities (biggest pieces) Tasks (or steps) Sub-tasks (smallest bits)
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- 11. STORY MAPPING HANDS-ON •Each table is set up with instructions and materials for an exercise. Each exercise is available at 3 tables. • There are 3 different exercises. Make sure you do all three – save your work on a piece of big paper. • Exercise #1 – Choose an MVP • Exercise #2 – Story map a common activity • Exercise #3 – Arrange cards into a story map • You have 10 minutes per exercise.
- 12. STORY MAPPING DE-BRIEF Take5 minutes to walk around and see all the varieties of response. What was easy? Hard? What would you approach differently next time? How can your team incorporate story mapping?
- 13. BREAK! Come back forPart 2 – Example Mapping!
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- 18. EXAMPLE MAPPING HANDS-ON •Each table is set up instructions and materials for an exercise. Each exercise is available at 3 tables. • There are 3 different exercises. Make sure you do all three – save your work on a piece of big paper. • Exercise #1 – Sort cards into rules and examples • Exercise #2 – Create your own example map • Exercise #3 – Guess rules from examples • You have 10 minutes per exercise.
- 19. EXAMPLE MAPPING DE-BRIEF Take5 minutes to walk around and see all the varieties of response. What did these exercises show you? What did you learn? Are rules or examples better? Why or why not?
- 20. TIPS FORTRYING WITHYOURTEAM Willyou try these activities with your team? What challenges will you face with your team? How will your team benefit?
- 21. WANTTO KNOW MORE? Jeff Patton,User Story Mapping, 2014 2 PageCheat Sheet: http://bit.ly/2gHTFtY MattWynne, "Introducing Example Mapping", http://bit.ly/1iw19w4 Michael Larsen, “UncharteredWaters”, http://bit.ly/1NMYyww Kishen Simbhoedatpanday, “Example Mapping–Steering the Conversation”, http://bit.ly/1Qlnz0y Lisa Crispin, “Experiment with Example Mapping”, http://lisacrispin.com/2016/06/02/experiment-example-mapping/
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Editor's Notes
- #2 Start 14:30 Intros -- JoEllen - first year- excited to be here. I worked in the agile tool space for 9 years, and now I’m on a team that builds an online ordering platform for some of your favorite fast casual restaurants - like Noodles, Tokyo Joes, Which Wich, Applebee’s, among others. I am a casual tweeter and blogger at testacious. Lisa - I’ve been testing on agile teams since 2000, a tester, programmer and other roles before that, I enjoy learning and meeting people at confs and sharing my experiences.
- #3 Lisa We’re trying to deliver business value frequently, at a sustainable pace. We need to shorten the feedback loop, make course corrections quickly. These are techniques we have used successfully, as have many teams we know.
- #4 Lisa 5 blind men and an elephant, each perceives something totally different - a rope, a tree trunk… Another version is an Elephant in a dark room and 5 people feeling different things - we need to bring candles! That’s what these techniques do. When I say ‘test’ - I don’t mean it in the traditional sense of retroactively checking something that has been built - I am talking about applying the principles of testing - of critically thinking about assumptions, impacts, outcomes, intended use - from the beginning to end of your product development.
- #5 14:35 JoEllen Testing early is really about asking the questions of testing earlier and at the product or feature level. Questions like -- how do I know that this does what I want it to do - How do i know that the thing I want it to do is the right thing to do? What are the unexpected things that can happen - what are the undesirable things that can happen - what are the happy accidents? because we want to think about these things earlier in the process...and so in essence, Testing is Thinking.
- #6 JoEllen Today we’ll talk about some of our favorite early testing strategies - ones that we’ve found particularly helpful - and fun too.. It’s great that we have so many to choose from, because if we use the same technique all the time, we get stale. We get bored. We just go through the motions and don’t think. We’ll also talk about Story Mapping, which is a way to break features or products down into stories, and we’ll have some hands-on practice of story mapping. And we’ll also introduce you to Lisa’s favorite Technique - Example Mapping, and also have some time to practice that.
- #7 JoEllen 14:40 ‘Story Mapping’ is a term coined by Jeff Patton, and is described in his book User Story Mapping, published in 2014, although he’s been talking about Story Mapping since at least 2008. While I was prepping for this presentation, I went back and read some of his early stuff on the concept of a ‘story’ in agile. It’s meant to be just a way to talk about who does what, and why. Not a list of acceptance criteria or requirements. Likewise, a backlog is not a flat list of features or story cards - the backlog tells a story too - the bigger story of how we get to a desired outcome. Story mapping is a way to tell that bigger story - to tell the story of a whole product or feature by telling the stories of the users who’ll use it. So if we’re telling stories, what does that make us? We are story tellers. I had a mindshift when I said that out loud for the first time. Story teller - what comes to mind? For me, I think of rich descriptive words, of drawing pictures with words, illustrations, using our imagination - we try to engage ourselves and our audience. An agile story - that placeholder in your story map - is simply a record of this story telling - it doesn’t have to include everything, just enough to remind us of what we thought about and experienced while we were telling the story.
- #8 JoEllen 14:43 So how do we build a story map? The physical thing. Well, as you might imagine, we tell stories. We tell stories about what happens, in sequence and in priority. Identify personas – who will use the product and feature, how will they use it – use them to guide your story map. We might not know all of the details in the beginning, so we start with the bigger pieces - the big rocks go in first, right? This is your workflow - left to right. Then we might dive deeper into each one of those activities and talk about all the steps we take while we’re doing that activity. Maybe other people are involved, so their stories get told told too. Once we get down to the smallest bits, then we’re at the agile story level.
- #9 It looks very neat and organized up here - but keep in mind this is the end result. A story map doesn’t just pop out fully formed, as we’ll see in our exercise. But once we have our story map, we can do some exciting things, like plan cohesive releases. Your walking skeleton will be the collection of stories that fall within the absolute minimum. That’s your MVP - first release.
- #10 JoEllen Why: visualize the big picture, get shared understanding, identify the value for focus, see gaps When: When the team kicks off a new product, release or feature Who: Everyone on the delivery team, everyone on the customer team, anyone who will be using your product even if they’re outside their team. Who’s the best person to initiate? Often it’s the product people, PO or PM, but it can be a tester. You can try it on your own even if you can’t get your team to do it. Part of your testing can be story mapping – to identify gaps. How: That’s what we’re about to show you.
- #11 JoEllen Party - that’s the THING I want to accomplish What are the big pieces of that - the basics - these are in red - MIGHT be your themes...maybe.. – these are the backbone of your story map – they look like vertebrae Then we get to the nuts and bolts of how to do things - the steps we take to invite guests, or order food, or stock the bar. These are the blue squares – which might become your epics. What is missing from this example? Anyone spot the big thing that is missing? These steps are what Jeff Patton calls the walking skeleton of the story map - Then, if there are subtasks under those, we list those below the task, with the most essential ones at the top. These are yellow in the example. These become the user stories You can divide the essential and non-essential stories across the map, then we have our releases. Called so because the stories hanging down look like ribs. - maybe you call it your MVP. Minimal Viable Product.
- #12 14:50 When you’re done, move your easel paper to the wall under the label for the exercise. Exercise #1 results here – etc.
- #13 15:20 Get their feedback first - post their flip chart Talk about it Show ‘Our’ results
- #14 15:30
- #15 16:00 Lisa Story is a reminder to have a conversation. My team had a problem: long cycle time and high rejection rate. We talked about stories in the IPM and estimated them, but, when the developers “finished” the story, they were lacking information about how that story should behave or not behave. I learned about example mapping last summer from Matt Wynne, and my team agreed to try it. It’s a lightweight framework to talk about stories in an “amigos” meeting. (explain how we do it)
- #16 Lisa Why? Get everyone on the same page before iteration planning, writing tests/code When? Before or during IPM Who? Amigos How? We shall show you!
- #17 Lisa
- #18 Lisa Schedule a meeting for a globally distributed team.
- #19 Lisa 16:10 Be sure to save your work to share later.
- #20 Lisa 16:40 How was the rule-guessing exercise – did the examples group guess the rules correctly? Get their feedback first -
- #21 Take 5 minutes to write down an action plan – what will you try with your team? Share it with someone at your table. Tips: Propose that the team try a 30 minute example mapping session and see how it goes. Form a team book club, read Jeff Patton’s book together and do the exercises together.
- #22 Lisa Discount - next slide
- #23 Give away books