10/20 User Story Mapping

This approach is quite different from design processes I’ve used in the past and it differs in two main ways First of all, although I have used user stories to define product requirements in the past, the user stories were short, written bullet points that were in a Notion document made specifically for documenting user stories. There were no pictures, diagrams, sticky notes, or conversations to accompany this written document of user stories. Therefore, the isolated, written user stories were not achieving the goal of enabling shared understanding across the team, because different team members could read the document and interpret each user story differently from another team member. We were lacking the productive conversations and visuals to go along with the user stories to ultimately build that shared understanding. In addition, at a tech startup that I worked at in the past, the goal was always to build as much as possible as fast as possible and then we could user test, iterate on, and improve upon the existing software we already built. In this case, the emphasis was on quantity and maximizing output versus maximizing outcome and impact. I am still not entirely convinced that minimizing output and maximizing outcome/impact is the right way to go with software. I guess it depends on the size of the company, the software product you’re building, and the users and their needs. For instance, if you’re a startup in a hot industry space building a software product that a lot of other people are also just now starting to build (emerging competitors), it probably makes sense to just build as quickly as possible to get your product out there and then you can user test it and improve it as you get feedback from users. On the other hand, if you are a healthcare company handling sensitive patient data and giving your patients access to critical healthcare, it probably makes sense to focus more on the quality of what your producing and the outcome/impact it has over the quantity of the software product you’re producing.