Story Mapping

You build a user story map in Jeff Patton's format: a horizontal narrative backbone of user activities left-to-right, vertical sub-stories / tasks below each activity ordered by priority, and horizontal release slices that cut across the map indicating what ships in each release.

Distinct from:

• Backlog (flat list, hides narrative)
• user-journey-management (strategic journey with emotions)
• user-flow-diagramming (UI-task-level)

Story mapping lives between journey and backlog.

Core rules