user-story-mapping

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from review. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: user-story-mapping
argument-hint: "[product or workflow]"
description: Create a user story map that lays out activities, steps, tasks, and release slices. Use when planning a workflow, backlog, or MVP around the user journey.
intent: >-
  Visualize the user journey by creating a hierarchical map that breaks down high-level activities into steps and tasks, organized left-to-right as a narrative flow. Use this to build shared understanding across product, design, and engineering, prioritize features based on user workflows, and identify gaps or opportunities in the user experience.
type: component
theme: pm-artifacts
best_for:
  - "Laying out activities, steps, and tasks across a user's workflow"
  - "Slicing a backlog into releases that each deliver something usable"
  - "Finding the gaps in a journey before they become production surprises"
scenarios:
  - "We have a flat backlog and no sense of the user's actual workflow"
  - "I need to slice this into releases that each deliver something usable"
estimated_time: "30-60 min"
---


## Purpose
Visualize the user journey by creating a hierarchical map that breaks down high-level activities into steps and tasks, organized left-to-right as a narrative flow. Use this to build shared understanding across product, design, and engineering, prioritize features based on user workflows, and identify gaps or opportunities in the user experience.

This is not a backlog—it's a strategic artifact that shows *how* users accomplish their goals, which then informs *what* to build.

## Input

**Works best with:** The product or user workflow being mapped.
**Also useful:** The primary user, the end-to-end narrative as you understand it, existing backlog items to place, and release goals.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill asks whose journey you're mapping and what they're trying to get done, then builds backbone → tasks → slices.

**Example invocation:** `Story map for our expense-reporting flow, from receipt capture to reimbursement, with an MVP slice for the pilot.`

## Key Concepts

### The Jeff Patton Story Mapping Framework
Invented by Jeff Patton, story mapping organizes work into a 2D structure:

**Horizontal axis (left-to-right):** User journey over time
- **Backbone:** High-level activities the user performs
- **Steps:** Specific actions within each activity
- **Tasks:** Detailed work required to complete each step

**Vertical axis (top-to-bottom):** Priority and releases
- **Top rows:** Essential tasks (MVP / Release 1)
- **Lower rows:** Nice-to-have tasks (Future releases)

### Story Map Structure

```
Segment → Persona → Narrative (User's goal)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Activity 1] → [Activity 2] → [Activity 3] → [Activity 4] → [Activity 5]
     ↓              ↓              ↓              ↓              ↓
  [Step 1.1]     [Step 2.1]     [Step 3.1]     [Step 4.1]     [Step 5.1]
  [Step 1.2]     [Step 2.2]     [Step 3.2]     [Step 4.2]     [Step 5.2]
  [Step 1.3]     [Step 2.3]     [Step 3.3]     [Step 4.3]     [Step 5.3]
     ↓              ↓              ↓              ↓              ↓
  [Task 1.1.1]   [Task 2.1.1]   [Task 3.1.1]   [Task 4.1.1]   [Task 5.1.1]
  [Task 1.1.2]   [Task 2.1.2]   [Task 3.1.2]   [Task 4.1.2]   [Task 5.1.2]
  [Task 1.1.3]   [Task 2.1.3]   [Task 3.1.3]   [Task 4.1.3]   [Task 5.1.3]
  ...            ...            ...            ...            ...
```

### Why This Works
- **User-centric:** Organizes work around user goals, not engineering modules
- **Shared understanding:** Product, design, engineering all see the same journey
- **Prioritization clarity:** Top tasks = MVP, lower tasks = future iterations
- **Gap identification:** Missing steps or tasks become obvious
- **Release planning:** Draw horizontal "