How to create a story map in Jira Software

[Nick Muldoon]

Story mapping is an essential practice for every agile team. The benefits include: 

• Shared Understanding Through Collaboration: allows distributed teams to conduct collaborative story mapping sessions in real-time by creating simple and elegant story maps alongside JIRA Software agile boards
• Focus on Desired Customer Outcomes: visualisation of the customer journey allows teams to identify and implement features based on customer outcomes, and track progress at a glance against a story map
• Bring the Customer Journey to Life: the transformation of the flat backlog to a customer centric story map means teams have a better understanding of their customer journey and what customers want
• Prioritising Actions Based on Value to Customer: visualisation of the customer journey allows teams to prioritise work based on “value to customer”, resulting in better outcomes and less waste

For a complete run down on story mapping see the Ultimate Guide to Story Mapping, incorporating:

1. Basics of User Story Mapping
   1. what is a User Story Map?
   2. examples of User Story Maps
   3. anatomy of a User Story Map
   4. why teams build User Story Maps
   5. benefits of Story Mapping 
   6. flat backlog vs. story maps 
      • differences & pitfalls 
   7. how User Story Mapping assists teams 
   8. case study: Story Mapping @ Atlassian 
   9. case study: Story Mapping  @ Twitter
2. Building an Agile User Story Map
   1. who to involve in a Story Mapping Session?
   2. anatomy of an agile User Story Map
      • backbone 
      • ordering the backbone 
      • user stories 
      • sequencing 
   3. walking through the Story Map
3. Writing Good User Stories
   1. what is a User Story?
   2. User Story template 
   3. examples of User Stories 
   4. User Story checklist
   5. why not tasks?
   6. what is acceptance criteria?
   7. examples of acceptance criteria
   8. acceptance criteria checklist
4. Using the story map for your backlog grooming sessions

Easy Agile TeamRhythm for Jira is the simple and elegant way to create story maps in JIRA. It will make your next story mapping session more effective.

Easy Agile User Story Maps for JIRA enables the team to quickly:

• build the backbone of epics,
• break down those epics with stories,
• order stories via drag and drop,
• estimate stories with inline edit to understand effort, and
• sequence work into sprints or versions by drag and drop.

Works with Scrum, Kanban and Next-Gen Jira Software boards.

Try Easy Agile TeamRhythm for Jira today.

Nick Muldoon, Co-CEO, Easy Agile

[LeKisha Boswell]

Thanks for sharing this!

[Liam Sheerin]

When is it coming as standard?

[Radim SM]

It seems the 'Board' is more development centric view and 'User Story Map' more user centric view

[Radim SM]

Is there a way to use Road Map and Story Map on the same project? It seems that Road Map requires Next Gen Project and Story Map is not supported in Next Gen.

[Omar Chin-Keow]

*bump*

I am interested in both also as we need it here and I don't want to choose between them.

Any feedback is better than no feedback.

Thanks. 

[Nick Muldoon]

Hi @Radim SM, @Omar Chin-Keow,

Easy Agile Roadmaps is available with NextGen projects as it shows issues of all types.

However, for Easy Agile User Story Maps we rely on the Epic Link functionality. Epics are the backbone of the story map, and stories/tasks/bugs shown below are linked using the Jira Software Epic Link.

Unfortunately today the Epic Link is not available on NextGen projects in Jira Software, and that is tracked on this Atlassian Jira Cloud backlog item: https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/browse/ACJIRA-1634

I encourage you to vote and comment on that issue to show your support and bump it up Atlassian's backlog.

As soon as Atlassian provides that functionality we'll implement in Easy Agile User Story Maps.

Thanks so much.

Regards,
Nick Muldoon
Product Manager, Easy Agile

[Lana Shoji]

I'm also interested in both the easy agile roadmaps and user story mapping plug-ins. Can you confirm the following:

1) Is Easy Agile Roadmaps only available with NextGen projects and is NOT an option with classic JIRA projects?

2) Easy Agile User story maps continues to be available only on classic projects in JIRA? Any updates?

[Sean Blake {Easy Agile}]

Hi Lana

Apologies for the slow reply.

1) Easy Agile Roadmaps is available for both NextGen projects and classic Jira projects.

2) Easy Agile User Story Maps is currently only available for classic projects because the functionality to tap into Epic Links has not been opened up by Atlassian on NextGen projects (yet). 

As soon as Atlassian provides that functionality we'll implement in Easy Agile User Story Maps.

This is tracked on this Atlassian Jira Cloud backlog item: https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/browse/ACJIRA-1634

Thanks Lana

Cheers
Sean Blake
Head of Marketing, Easy Agile

[Guy Connor]

Hi!

 It looks like this backlog item has been done. Could you confirm that Easy Agile now provides full functionality (incl story maps) for NextGen projects?

Thanks!

[Nick Muldoon]

Hi @Guy Connor, @Lana Shoji, @Omar Chin-Keow , @Radim SM 

Easy Agile User Story Maps is now compatible  with Next-Gen projects. Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Nick Muldoon, Easy Agile

[Priyanka Ghongade]

Thank you for sharing

[Deleted user]

Very useful thanks!

[Pete Forsey]

Very useful, thank you!

[Joseph Winkelbauer]

Interesting, how well does it work for epics?

[Sean Blake {Easy Agile}]

Hey Joseph

It works really well with Epics. When you load up the User Story Map the top of the board you will become a horizontal row of epics.

If you already have Epics associated with your board, this will be pre-populated.

Each epic represents an activity of the users flow through the product. This is often referred to as the 'backbone' of the story map. 

You can then drag linked tasks, issues, stories into the map and start doing things like sequencing work and adding sprint swim lanes.

More info about how to set up a Easy Agile User Story Map can be found here: https://docs.easyagile.com/easy-agile-user-story-maps/creating-a-story-map/

Cheers,
Sean Blake [Easy Agile]

[Joseph Winkelbauer]

I really would like to try to push this idea for use in our workflow for bigger items.  I'm curious to see if it would work.

[Sean Blake {Easy Agile}]

Sounds great Joseph. You can try it for free here, to see if it will work for your workflow in Jira.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out: support@easyagile.com

Cheers
Sean

[Andre Sanches]

Many thanks for the summary of important points

[Roisin Lamprell]

Many thanks for this, I'm an agile newbie in a PO role after 25 years in project management.  I am finding the help from the community valuable as I walk my way through this 'foreign land and language' but with the Atlassian Community I am getting there. Many thanks

[Sophia Thuong Vo]

got it!

[wmateo]

Muy buena la información!

[Andrey Shmigelsky]

Looks like any user story or task should be under Epic. And if a user story doesn't need an epic and can be done by couple of hours task? Should I still open an Epic for it and keep it open? (in case this functionality will require improvements in future)

[Tenille _ Easy Agile]

Hi Andrey,

Those tasks that don’t fit neatly into an epic are often a point of discussion. Where some might argue that the epics on your story map mustn’t completely capture the user journey, others might recognise that some tasks to satisfy administrative or regulatory requirements don’t always map to a user requirement. Though they still take time and effort and you may wish to still account for these tasks in your planning and reporting.

For some tasks, it may be a matter of engaging some ‘system 2’ thinking before being able to map that story to an epic. For example, does a security update impact user authentication, so can be mapped to that process?

For other tasks that don’t directly impact a step in the user journey, it may be more efficient to maintain a themed epic that you can use to account for those tasks that you know need to be done. 

My colleague Jasmin has written a little more about using epics with agile teams on our blog: https://www.easyagile.com/blog/epics-agile/

At the end of the day, they way you categorise your epics and stories is up to you, but I’d be really keen to hear how you decide to resolve this small task issue, so please keep us updated!

Cheers
Tenille Hoppo | Easy Agile