Why Visual Story Maps are Better
I can see clearly now. Take a look at why visual story mapping techniques and technologies provide an advantage over traditional methods.
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Join For FreeVisual story mapping is more than creating your run-of-the-mill to-do list. It is the best technique to enable your entire product management team to visualize multiple dimensions of information – and focus on how everything will come together to form a successful solution. Visual story maps align all product managers and create a common understanding of what needs to get done and how to go about doing it.
If you’re not convinced yet, here are the top reasons why easy Agile user story maps are better than any other product management tool out there.
Story Mapping Pros
Product backlog visual presentation is available to every one of the partners on the same page, as far as the scope and complexity are concerned. A view of a project size is additionally given.
- Requirements caught in a physical organization encourages coordinated effort and constructs shared comprehension.
- As far as inception is typically a time-boxed movement, the story mapping approach serves to plunge profoundly into and concentrate on critical components of the application. Checking "good to have" highlights as "out of view" amid profound plunge sessions, helps the group to save their time.
- Oddly enough, but having all stories gathered on the blackboard enables the group to perform relative estimation of the stories extremely rapidly.
- The structure of the story map assists with prioritization and offers simple backlog slicing into releases and tailors out MVP (minimum viable product). Slicing should be possible both horizontally and vertically, for example, few components or more with MVP in every feature.
- The story map can be adjusted to Agile story mapping software like Craft
User Story Maps Paint the Bigger Picture
Visual story mapping gives a holistic view of the entire project, including types of stories, story and project viability, the flow between stories over time, alternative ways of completing a single story, the priority of stories and the planned completion or increment of each story and its related product. The visual presentation of the product backlog (big picture) in the form of stories brings all the product management team members onto the same page, for optimal productivity.
Visual Story Maps Foster Collaboration
User story mapping enhances visualization and understanding of the various components and complexities involved in any given project. All product management team members are able to cooperate and collaborate by selecting clearly defined tasks that meet product management needs.
Visual Story Mapping Enables Gap Analysis
When product management tasks are mapped as visual user stories, teams are better able to locate and identify and build missing project elements. They can add these necessary solutions to the workflow and create effective features and solutions, for a more successful final product.
Conclusion
Effective story mapping is a viable starting point in the organization of your backlog and the product roadmap in an outwardly organized manner. It is a product discovery tool that helps to make a requirement understandable, build its common comprehension, distinguish crevices the gaps in backlog and catch the interdependencies, better perform the relative estimation. Further, it can likewise help with the backlog slicing into the timely releases and other arrangement activities.
To step up to a higher level in digital product management, you are welcome to discover online user story mapping tools that are easy to use and extremely effective for your business. Do not forget to include them in your everyday tool list and use on the regular basis.
Published at DZone with permission of Vadym Muraviov. See the original article here.
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