Mike Lyons walks through user story mapping, a technique that lays out the complete user journey horizontally and prioritizes features vertically. See how to organize an email signup flow, separate must-haves from nice-to-haves, and plan releases without losing sight of what users actually need.
You know what's funny about building products? Sometimes we get so caught up in the details that we lose sight of the whole journey. It's like taking a road trip and focusing only on the gauges on the dashboard, but ignoring the map on the screen. Sure, you're moving forward, but are you actually heading in the right direction? You're going the wrong way. One of the ways that we can see the whole journey is with a tool called User Story Mapping. Now, before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to Jeff Patton. You might say he wrote the book on this subject. I mean that literally. He wrote a whole book about it. Now, I'm just going to give it a quick flyby here, but this is a great book and I recommend you grab up a copy. Well, to help us understand this concept a little deeper, I'm going to use a common activity we're probably all familiar with signing up for a new account using email. Now, we can draw this up as a series of cards In a grid across the top, we're going to list out the main steps our users take to sign up for a new account. Now, this grouping of steps is what we call an activity. It's a collection of steps that helps users achieve a specific goal. Working from left to right, here's how a user signs up for a new account. First, they enter their email address. Then they enter a password. Then they open a confirmation email. Then they click validate in that email and then they log into their new account. Now, each of these is a step in the signup journey. You read across by adding the word then between each step and that creates a sort of narrative flow for this user journey. Let's zoom in on that. Enter email address step. We might want to have a basic email field with format validation. Check if the email already exists in the system. Remember previously used email addresses? We might show available username suggestions or even have some domain whitelist blacklist checking. Now this is where prioritization comes in. We can arrange these options from top to bottom. Most important to least important, you've got your sort of must haves at the top and your nice to haves at the bottom. Now we do this for each activity that our users go through with our product. As you can see, these user journey maps, they get pretty large, but they're amazingly powerful. And one of the reasons they're so powerful is they can be used as a product roadmap. This allows product owners to clearly communicate the intended delivery sequence of FE across multiple releases. Here's how we would do that. We're going to add a horizontal line across the story map to create swim lanes that represent different releases or versions. And we'll label each swim lane to indicate which release it is. Maybe it's product launch, release one, release two, and now you can move the steps into the forecasted release. It might go without saying, but you don't need to include everything from each column in your releases. There will always, and I mean always, be more work to do that can be fit into a single release. In this visualization, it sort of prompts discussions about priorities and dependencies and release planning. Stakeholders can see not just how features relate to each other functionally, but also when they can expect different capabilities to be delivered. For product owners like you, it provides a powerful tool for managing expectations and communicating the evolution of the product. And for the teams, it helps them focus on delivering the most valuable features first, while maintaining a clear vision of the complete product journey. As a po and as you become more familiar with this technique, you'll likely have a chance to facilitate a user story mapping session. Then here's some tips for facilitating your first one. Start with the walk. Before you touch any cards or tools, just talk through the journey first. The user does this, then they do that. Get the sequence clear in everyone's mind. Use the then or test. When placing cards, ask does the user do this, then that, or is it they do this or that? It'll help you decide if something should be a next step do this, then that, or an option below a step do this or that. Here's another tip. Keep your cards simple. One idea per card is usually best. If you need to explain what's on the card. It's probably a little too complex and bring the right people. You need folks who understand the user journey. That's like product people. You need people who can build it, like developers. And of course, if possible, bring in your users. They're the closest ones to the journey. Don't worry about perfection. Your first map won't be perfect, and that's okay. Story maps are living documents. They grow and they change as you learn more. Now, as we close this out, I want you to know that you don't need to story map everything. Small changes or enhancements to existing features, those can all be built without mapping everything out. But for big new features or starting a new product, a story map is your best friend. And I know this can seem like a lot to digest. It's a big concept and like I said, there's a whole book written on it. But to help make it clearer, we have a handy resource for you down below this video of all of these user story mapping concepts from Jeff Patton himself. Remember, a good story map isn't about listing features. It's about understanding your user's journey and making sure you're building the right things in the right order. Just like planning that road trip, you need to know your destination, your main route, and all the possible ways to get there, all while keeping an eye on the gauges.
