Agile User Story Mapping Board for Jira

It could be tricky to prioritize hundreds of user stories in a spreadsheet or Jira. You need to know which of them are the highest value features so that you can build them next. An advanced technique to organize stories is preferred over a messy product backlog. This is where user story maps can help – they're a simple way to tell story and break it down into parts.

The User Story Map was invented by Jeff Patton in his book, User Story Mapping, in which he explained the concept and its practice. I highly recommend this book.

Basically, story mapping visualizes the user's journey through our software in a step-by-step flow, creating a variety of user stories along the way. Compared to a flat backlog, a user story map includes the additional dimensions of position and movement through the landscape of your product, allowing you to first map and then navigate the entire user space of your product. With a user story map, you can understand your whole product's or feature's experience, so you can use mapping to break down big stories without losing the big picture.

How User Story Map Works

The backbone of the story map is the core set of steps a user must work through to accomplish their goal. The steps make up a narrative of the user's journey. Within each step the user takes towards completing an activity, there is the added dimension of the various user stories that can be taken to achieve the step depending on the user and their context.

• Goals: The actions that users take in order to reach their larger goals have a goal level themselves that's tied to user behavior.
• Steps: A lower level under Goal, where we create the backbone of the map by telling the story or narrative of the user's journey.
• Stories: The basic building blocks of a map, which describe something you can deliver and evaluate
• Releases: The swim lanes which split the story map horizontally to show what is in and out of each release.

Here are a few benefits of using story maps as a user story tool:

• Manage backlog with an overview and leveled structure.
• Brainstorm, discuss, and prioritize user needs in a collaborative approach.
• Manage activities and tasks, and systematically divide them into epics or user stories.
• Arrange and prioritize user activities and user tasks or drill down to refine them into related epics or user stories.
• Collaboratively manage user stories online for both remote and co-located environments to keep everyone on your team on the same page.