ALM User's Guide

J. Patton offered a communicative practice that allows to identify and structure user requirements, trace them into business goals and particular people who perform some activity to achieve these goals (person method ). To perform story mapping, you'll need a horizontal (table) or a vertical (wall) surface onto which you can fix sticky colored notes.

Together with a business user or a customer representative, you figure out persons who need automation. For each person you write down the goals that drive planning of the development/enhancement of software system. Goals are written on the yellow notes. Business activities performed by persons to achieve the goals are written on the blue notes which are placed under the corresponding goals. Then you write down the particular user actions in system on the yellow notes under each activity (usually such actions are written in the form of user story).

Here is the example of what it looks like:

This is an important artifact used by the customer and the assignee to control the implementation progress. However, you cannot leave it on the wall or on the table because the notes will just fall down, or someone will remove them and throw away. It's necessary to digitize this map, and Functions (or Epics) module perfectly fits for that purpose.

First, you must set up the dictionary of function levels and add the following values into it: Person, Goal, Activity. Then you can commit a story map as follows: