User story mapping is a technique to arrange user stories from a customer's perspective to help teams understand functionality, identify gaps, and effectively plan releases. It takes a top-down approach, starting with customer goals and breaking them down into activities, tasks, and individual stories. The process involves mapping stories on a board or document from left to right based on priority and top to bottom from critical to less critical. This provides a shared understanding of the product and allows slicing stories into sprints.

1. User story Mapping
What | Who | Why | How | Whodunit
Gopalakrishnan
Tesco Technology

2. Curtains Open
 So what’s a user story? What’s so special about it…!

3. Story Maps to the Rescue

4. The What
 A user story map arranges user stories into a useful model to
 help understand functionality of system/product from end/user customer standpoint
 identify gaps and omissions in your backlog (in case of existing backlogs) and
 effectively plan holistic releases that deliver value
 Top-down approach of requirement gathering starting from a Mission and
focusing on the Customer Need that is being solved or worth solving
 Story Map Structure: Goals > Activities > Tasks > Stories
 Goals – Customer mission and what they ultimately want in real world
 Activities - Activity customers will use product for; things they do
 User Tasks – Steps taken to complete an activity embarked upon
 Stories – Details (further drill down) of each of those steps taken

5. The Who
 Story mapping as a concept (a pattern) brought to light by Jeff Patton
 Created this big story map on the floor along with the founder of madmimi.com
Who All?
 Typical scrum team (or a subset) can participate along with Product Owner/Manager
 Brings about shared understanding - a “sneak peak” into stories in the release
 Further reading -> http://www.amazon.com/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/

6. The Why
 User stories are ‘boundary objects’ – info open to interpretation 
 Arranging user stories in a random order we build them doesn’t help much
 Puts focus on users’ experience -> better conversation -> better product
 Helps larger group build shared understanding of what team is building
 Easy and logical ‘chunking’ or ‘break down’ of epics into stories & further
 Create the feature backlog and have visibility of atleast 3 sprints ahead
 Possibility of arriving at an MVP (minimum viable product)? Maybe! 

7. The How
 If stories are going to be created afresh, start from customer view (goals)
 Assume building an email system & customers goal is to communicate easily with world
 Break down goals into activities - that has lots of steps, & no proper workflow
 “managing email” becomes the activity
 Further drill down to “user tasks” that customers need to do as part of activity
 “send message,” “read message,” “delete message,” “mark message as spam”
 Put first activity on the left & next on the right (priority tasks start on left most)
 For ex: “sending message” starts on left since its more priority than “delete message”
 Should be able to explain in “sending message” and “then” delete message from sent
 If stories are already available-> Group stories by application/theme/functionality
 Once the story map is ready start slicing it into sprints by horizontal lines or slices
 This gives you a clear view of what’s in the immediate sprint & for 2-3 sprints ahead
 Tools to use: Stickies, Featuremap.co , storiesonboard.com, G-Docs/Excel sheet

8. Whodunit?
 The Email System Example below

9. Grand Finale
 Think customer first, since you can achieve more “value” thru stories that come out
 Left to right for priority -> This first task is done , then the next task (on the right) …
 Top to bottom for critical items to not so critical/novelty (basic necessity to delighters)
 Slicing & color code to identify sprint level stories & bringing tech story perspective
Height of story mapping: Full story map (complete & complex product) after 5 days of activities looks this way

10. That’s All Folks! 
Discussions | Q & A