Discussion of Patton’s Perspective
Jeff Patton does an incredible job emphasizing and qualifying the importance of keeping users at the center of decisions, and explains how to best work with users to build a successful product in “User Story Mapping”. One aspect that the reading emphasized is that sharing documentation is not the same thing as being aligned with users—real alignment comes from talking directly with and sketching with users, keeping them informed and deeply understanding their priorities. Similarly, do not separate these conversations from documentation. Rather, utilize “Talk and Doc: write cards or sticky notes to externalize your thinking as you tell stories.” The goal of these conversations should not be to better the narrative or user stories themselves, because what is good documentation without a good end result. Rather, for bettering the end solution, it’s crucial to prioritize finding a shared understanding of the product being built through these conversations.
How it Aligns With Mine
The lesson that stood out to me the most, though, was “minimize output, and maximize outcome and impact.” The priority should never be the features, especially the quantity of features, themselves. Rather, the priority must be whether what we are building has the intended impact on our customers and our business. This has been one of the strongest lessons I have learned in my last few years of interning in tech and working on project, more generally. Even in more granular aspects of designing projects and solutions, I was initially intrigued that we began with understanding user pain points—through high school, projects were always framed as “here are your requirements”, so this was a new perspective. Beginning from pain points, understanding user journeys and workflows, and aligning on how these transition to functional requirements ensure that we are building for the sake of maximizing outcome and impact for our customers, and is a perspective I have continuously worked to improve.
