User Story Mapping
Jeff Patton's method for visualizing the user flow.
PURPOSE
Traditional flat backlogs quickly lose overall context and the user perspective. User Story Mapping places the user journey at the center and helps teams understand how individual stories contribute to the overall experience. It enables meaningful slicing into release increments that each deliver end-to-end value.
HOW TO USE
You first lay out the user's activities as a horizontal axis (backbone). Below that, individual user stories are arranged as vertical detail layers. Horizontal lines define release slices, with the topmost slice representing the Minimum Viable Product.
WHAT IT IS
User Story Mapping is a method developed by Jeff Patton for two-dimensional visualization of a product backlog. The horizontal axis shows the user flow (user journey), and the vertical axis shows the level of detail of the stories. It combines the benefits of user stories with a visual overview of the entire product.
EXAMPLE
Example: Your team has a flat backlog with 200 user stories and nobody understands the overall context anymore. With User Story Mapping, you lay out the user journey horizontally — from registration through product search to checkout — and arrange stories vertically by priority. You can instantly see which stories form the first usable release (Walking Skeleton).