Whether you’re completely new to user story mapping or you’re close to becoming a black-belt story mapper, we’ve got some useful resources for you. We’ve collected the top:
- short intros
- advanced techniques and use-cases in detail
- best story mapping tools out there.
Best places to go if you need a short intro into user story mapping
- It’s All in How You Slice – Design your project in working layers to avoid half-baked incremental releases – Jeff Patton, 2005, the first article, where it all begin, an eye opener, the essence in 6 pages, pdf
- The new user story backlog is a map – Jeff Patton, 2008, similar to the previous, 10 minute read
- User stories and use cases – don’t use both! – Shane Hastie, Angela Wick, 2014, for those who worked with uses cases, 15m read
- Lean Startup + Story Mapping = Awesome Products Faster! – Brad Swanson, 2014, 24 slides
- How Story Mapping Complements Agile Development – Matthew Heusser, 2014, “conversation with several experts on the topic” in a q&a format, 5m read
- User Story Mapping: our choice as feature listing method – Andrea Giannangelo, 2010, 5m read
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What to read after the intros
- How to create a User Story Map – Steve Rogalsky, 2012, 5m read
- User Story Mapping in Practice – Steve Rogalsky, 2013, 70 slides
- Tips for Facilitating a User Story Mapping Session – Steve Rogalsky, 2012, 2m read
- How to Prioritize a User Story Map – Steve Rogalsky, 2013, 5m read
- Don’t Etch your User Story Map in Stone – Steve Rogalsky, 2013, 5m read
- Splitting user stories: the hamburger method – Gojko Adzic, 2012, another interesting method for making stories small from a technical perspective, 10m read
- Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? – Michael Wolfe, 2013, very well written Quora answer, 5m read
Master your story mapping skills
Download the Free Story Mapping Playbook
- 50 handpicked hints
- 100 user story examples
- Templates for specs
- and much more advanced materials
Longer (deeper) readings & videos
- Story Mapping for UX Practitioners: Tying Agile & UX Together – Jeff Patton, 2011, 90m video, accessible with 30 days free trial account
- The book: User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product on Amazon and O’Reilly – Jeff Patton, 2014
- Story Mapping – David Hussman, 2013, seems to be a record from DevJam’s training, 43m
- Story Map, Slices, Customer Journeys and Other Product Design Tools – David Hussman, 2013, A presentation recorded at AgileSingapore, 1:18m
- Jeff Patton Discusses Product Development, Agile, and Story Mapping – Interview with Jeff Patton by Todd Charron, 2014, 33m video
Practical resources for agile planning with story mapping
- Hot to plan a product release with story maps by Suzanne Abate, PM Coach, Cofounder of TDF
- Expert tips for user persona design in story mapping
- Agile story mapping mistakes and how to avoid them
Top story mapping tools
- walls, whiteboard and pen
- Spreadsheet tool like Ms Excel, Google Spreadsheet, Libre Calc
- Richard Hundhausen’s list of Story Mapping Software, 2013
- CardBoard by DevJam
- Story Mapper by Carbon Five
- FeatureMap by Salience
- murally by Tactivos
- Miro
- Agile User Story Map by bauer.it consulting
- Silver Stories by Silver Stripe Software
- last but not least StoriesOnBoard by DevMads
Did you read anything valuable that’s not on the list? Please share it in the comments.
Other handy story mapping resource collections
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Top 5 short articles (2017)
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Story mapping for UX (2021)
Differences between story mapping and process mapping (2021)