User Story Map

Use a User Story Map as a collaborative and widely executed practice to guide your team in the creation and management of your product backlog. On the story map you capture the journey of your users interacting with your product or service. The level of detail can differ but includes activities and tasks a user undertakes throughout the journey.
Creating the story map as a team ensures team members are on the same page from the start of development through to ongoing delivery of new releases.

Journey (Backbone)

The journey provides the structure. It is the backbone of your user story map. The journey defines the high level activities a user will accomplish while using the product.

Chronological Order

Once you have defined the user journey you put them in chronological order of how a user will interact with the product. It is common to rearrange existing activities or add new activities as the discussion unfolds. This is a key benefit of the collaborative approach to building the product backlog as you have the shared wisdom of an entire team involved in the discussion.

Stories

Below each activity you now create user stories which flesh out the customer journey. The stories should be ordered by value they deliver to the user. Value may be identified through conversations with users, analytics on usage patterns, or another form of insight appropriate for your product.

Releases

Once you have the backbone and stories ordered it is time to bring them into a sequence. Define which parts you want to deliver in your MVP, release 1.0, release 2.0, etc. Use your story map also throughout delivery to track progress and continuously adjust your story map if necessary. As a team and lead by the Product Owner, start a sprint planning session by reviewing the story map to ensure that all team members are still on the same page.

With a user story map you turn a flat backlog into a vivid and living representation of the customer journey.