Story mapping is a technique described by Jeff Patton to add dimension to the flat agile backlog and describe how a system will come into being through time and across its many components. It creates a high level view of your project while addressing the need to prioritize individual stories.
To use Story Mapper, all you need is a Pivotal Tracker project with labels that identify primary user activities, or components, of your system. If you use releases to identify milestones, even better.
A Bit More Detail
At Carbon Five, we use story mapping while writing stories and planning releases. The sequence goes something like this:
- We start by writing stories on index cards.
- We create the map on a big conference table.
- We then add the stories to Tracker with user activities as labels and milestones as releases. This gives us a great backlog, but we lose the dimensionality of the story map.
- We use Story Mapper to return to the story map to view project progress and adjust the high level project plan, while staying in sync with activities in Tracker.
- We continue to use Tracker in day-to-day execution and tactical planning.
We strongly recommend that you learn more about story mapping from Jeff Patton's writings. The new story backlog is a map is a good introduction. These presentation slides get in to significantly more detail.
If you are curious about how we are mapping between Tracker and Story Mapper or have other questions, please see Help.
