Story Maps in practice: enable early feedback to build what really matters
Christian Hassa
Tutorial
Summary
Build – Measure – Learn is one of the most important mechanisms of agile software development. However, this mechanism is often crippled in nowadays projects, where traditional approaches of requirements gathering are bloating up product backlogs that cannot be prioritized anymore in a meaningful way. The results are customers not interested in iteration results, release to production that happens only at the end of the project, and feedback from customers when it is already too late and the budget is burned up.
Story mapping is a method that aligns user stories along desirable outcomes, so that customers can give sooner meaningful feedback, and release to production can happen earlier. The method helps slicing and prioritizing user stories, and addresses the product design aspect that is missing when just working with a product backlog. The method is highly visual and facilitates shared product ownership among product owner, team and customer.
This workshop gives a hands-on introduction to story mapping. Participants will be introduced to the concept and build their first story map during the workshop. The workshop concludes with things I’ve learned so far in using story maps in own projects, and what further benefits story maps can provide.
Presenter
Christian Hassa is specializing in agile requirements engineering methods, particularly story mapping and specification-by-example. He is working for several years as Product Owner and Scrum Coach, mainly in the public and financial sector. As managing partner at TechTalk, a .NET services and consulting company focusing on agile delivery, his role is leading the evolvement of methodology and practices and facilitating their application in projects and at clients.
