The Story Mapping Workshop:

How to Use Story Maps for Agile Release (Quarterly) Planning

Date TBD
Location: IRL or online
Presented in English by Howard Podeswa

Duration: 8 hours (delivered in 1 day IRL; 2 half-days when virtual)

Price: $TBD USD (excl. taxes)

Contact us about delivering this course to your organization.

Learning Objectives

What is this training about and why is it important?

Are you a Product Owner, Product Manager or Business Analyst in an agile organization? Take this workshop to gain hands-on experience building story maps for release planning or epic planning. You’ll learn how to use Story Maps to: visualize the implementation and operational sequencing of stories; ensure a coherent set of features is delivered frequently; test product and feature hypotheses; plan MVP experiments and quick wins; identify gaps and visualize dependencies between stories.

This is a rare opportunity to gain practical experience using this powerful technique with an acclaimed author as your coach. Come and join us as you develop a case study in online group workshops with your peers. Sign up on your own to work with others around the world - or bring along your team to work together on an in-flight project.

What you will learn and how you can apply it

  • Facilitate a Story Mapping session to plan an upcoming quarter or release cycle

  • Leverage existing analysis models for Story Mapping - including use-case and business process models

  • Use Story Maps to plan an MVP or spanning application

  • Use Story Maps to visualize how stories will combine to support sprint goals and test leap-of-faith hypotheses about the product or feature

  • Use Story maps to identify and communicate dependencies and usage context

This training is for you because …

  • You are a new to the Product Owner role. This training will improve your ability to plan for incremental value delivery across the release or quarterly planning cycle.

  • You are a seasoned analyst or other IT professional transitioning to an agile role as PO, Proxy PO or team analyst. This course helps you upskill your quarterly planning capabilities and will make you a more effective facilitator during planning events.

Full Programme

  • Module 1: Fundamentals of Story-Mapping

    • What is a Story Map?

    • When to use Story Mapping?

    • Story Mapping Benefits

    • Anatomy of a Story Map: Zones on the Map, Cards

    • Dependencies on the Map

  • Module 2: Constructing the Backbone

    • Utilizing existing analysis artifacts: Process models, Value-Stream Maps, Use-case models

    • Specifying Users, Activities and User tasks on the Map

    • Sizing user tasks

  • Module 3: Planning the first increments - MVPs on the Story Map

    • Adaptive, learning-based planning with MVPs

    • Where to deploy MVPs

    • MVPs on the Story Map

    • Leap of Faith Hypotheses

    • MVP process

    • MVP types

  • Module 4: Completing the ”Ribs” section

    • Overview of Ribs section of a Story Map

    • “User Task View” Approach

    • Story-Splitting: Planning the first story; Splitting by AC; Splitting by Use-Case Flow

    • Mapping spikes

    • Prioritization/sequencing considerations

    • “Timeline View” Approach

    • Crafting Sprint Goals and Assumptions/Hypotheses

    • Planning Stories to support the goal

Recommended reading (but not required to attend this course)

Add me to the waiting list for the next public course (TBD)