How to Create a Story Map in Jira

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Agile development is all about delivering value quickly and iteratively, and a story map is one of the best tools to help you achieve that. It provides a visual way to organize your product backlog, ensuring that your team understands the big picture while focusing on the details that matter for the next sprint. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of creating a story map in Jira, using Planyway for Jira to simplify and enhance your workflow.

What is a story map and why use it?

A story map is a strategic visual tool that breaks down your product or feature development into tasks (stories) aligned with your customer’s journey. It organizes user stories into activities (epics) across a timeline or workflow, allowing your team to see what needs to be done, when, and why.

Benefits of story mapping

• Enhanced prioritization of features and tasks.

• Better collaboration among teams.

• A clear connection between business goals and development tasks.

How to create a story map in Jira

Here are some approaches and ideas that you can try:

1. The "Pure Jira" Approach 

This approach attempts to create a story map using only native Jira features, without any marketplace apps. It typically involves:

• Epics as user activities: using Epics to represent high-level user activities or themes.
• Stories as user tasks: regular Stories linked to Epics as the individual user tasks or "stories".
• Sub-tasks for detailed steps: breaking down Stories further if needed.
• Kanban boards: using a Kanban board to visualize progress, perhaps with swimlanes for Epics.
• Jira dashboards: creating a dashboard with various Jira filters and gadgets to show a "snapshot" of the map.

➕Pros: no additional cost for apps. No new tools to learn.

➖Cons: extremely poor visualization. Hard to see the full user journey. Difficult to reorder and prioritize visually. Requires constant mental mapping by the team. Fails to capture the collaborative whiteboard feel. It's like trying to paint a masterpiece with a spreadsheet.

2. The "Jira + Whiteboard tool" approach

This is a very common and often effective approach. You use an external digital whiteboard tool (like Miro, Mural, FigJam, or even Lucidchart/Excalidraw) to design and visualize the story map collaboratively. Then, once the map is stable, you manually or semi-automatically create the corresponding issues in Jira.

• Whiteboard phase: the team collaboratively builds the story map on the digital whiteboard, arranging activities, tasks, and stories. This is where the magic happens – discussion, re-prioritization, and visual flow.
• Jira creation phase: once the map is agreed upon, individual "story" items from the whiteboard are translated into Jira issues (often Stories, linked to Epics). Some tools offer direct Jira integration for this, others require manual creation or CSV import.

➕Pros: fantastic for collaboration and ideation. Unconstrained visual layout. Can easily capture personas, pain points, and other context around the map.

➖Cons: potential for "drift" between the whiteboard and Jira if not maintained. Manual effort to create/update Jira issues. The whiteboard can become a stale artifact if not actively referenced.

3. The "Dedicated Jira Story Mapping App" Approach

This is, in my strong opinion, the best way to do story mapping within Jira for ongoing product development. These are purpose-built Jira marketplace apps designed specifically for story mapping. They typically:

• Render Jira issues as a map: they pull your existing Jira Epics and Stories and display them in a visual story map format.
• Drag-and-drop prioritization: allow you to drag and drop stories to reorder them, move them between releases/sprints, and link them to epics directly on the map.
• Inline editing: edit Jira issue details (summary, assignee, sprint, etc.) directly from the map.
• Release/sprint planning: often include swimlanes or visual indicators for releases, sprints, or different product increments.

➕Pros: live, always up-to-date map reflecting your Jira data. Eliminates drift. Excellent for release planning and backlog grooming. Keeps the entire team aligned on the user journey and priorities within Jira itself.

➖Cons: additional cost for the app. Requires learning a new interface (though usually intuitive). Can be overkill for very small, simple projects that just need a quick visual.

Key apps to mention (for Cloud): Easy Agile User Story Maps, Product Go, Story Maps for Jira. 

How Planyway can help

Planyway is an invaluable companion for execution and long-term planning, particularly after the initial story map is designed. Planyway isn't where you'd create the user journey or ideate the map itself. Its strength lies in taking the prioritized output of a story map (your Epics and Stories) and making them actionable and time-bound. 

How it helps:

• Excellent for visualizing. Shows you when parts of your user journey will be ready.
• Critical for dependency management. Helps avoid scheduling conflicts that could break the flow of your user story map.
• Resource allocation at a glance. Helps ensure you have the capacity to deliver the stories you've mapped out.
• Bridging the gap from "what" to "when". Takes the "what" from your story map and adds the crucial "when" and "who."

Let us know in the comments: How do you use story maps in your Jira workflows? Share your tips, tricks, and best practices below!