Story Mapping for Feature Discovery

A Comprehensive Guide to Craft.io Story Mapping view

Maayan Ayalon avatar
Written by Maayan Ayalon
Updated over a week ago

Story Mapping methodology is a simple yet powerful way to help product teams get on the same page and discuss user stories visually. Craft.io's Story Mapping view helps you ideate and see your entire product in a ‘sticky note’ style view. You can create your user flow, drag cards around, and set priorities using lanes.

Check out this quick video overview or if you prefer, follow the step by step walkthrough below:

 

Story Mapping step-by-step:

Access Story Mapping

Select Planning > Story Mapping from the navigation bar:

 

Select your Product

The Story Mapping flow begins with selecting your Product, then creating Sections, and finally adding Features to each Section.

Tip: You can change the terminology of key terms like Sections and Features (e.g. to Epics and Stories) via the terminology section of your Workspace settings (accessed through the bottom-left user profile menu). Please check out this article to understand more about Craft.io's data model and how you can get the most from it. 

To select your product:

  • Use the Product filter to select and switch between existing Products, or; 

  • Create a new Product by selecting '+ Product' from the dropdown menu of the Product filter. 

  • To filter your view, click the Filters button to open up the full filter toolbars. Learn more about Search and Filters here.

Add Sections to Story Map

Add new Sections by clicking on the blue '+' button from the top toolbar, or directly on the Story Map board by hovering in the top lane and clicking the '+ Section' sign when it appears. 

  • Type in the Section title and hit enter.

  • Double click on a Section to update its title.

  • A single click on a Section will open it in full editable mode. Here you can add a description, attach files, and much more.

Adding Features to Story Map

Your Features describe the actual tasks that need to be performed in order to complete the Section.

To add new Features under your Section, use the '+' button from the top toolbar, or add them directly to the Story Map board by hovering over the bottom of a Section column and clicking the '+ Feature’ sign.

  • Type in the Feature title and hit enter

  • Double-click the Feature to update its title

  • A single click will open the Feature in full editable mode. Here you can add a description, assign it to Releases, Sprints, Teams, add Sub-Features and much more.

  • You may add as many Features to the Section as you need.

Organize your Story Map using Activities

You can divide your Sections into Activities, which are headers or titles used to group your individual Sections.

Add new activities by hovering above a Section. The '+ Activity' sign will appear above the Section: click it and enter the title of your Activity. 

 

Organize your Story Map using Lanes

Lanes are horizontal dividers used to visually arrange your map and to multi-select Features for bulk actions.

  • To create a lane, move your cursor to the left of Story Map, hover above a Feature row and click the + sign once the dotted horizontal line appears.

  • To multi-select Features, hover to the left of an existing Lane, then click the checkbox which appears beside it. All Features below the Lane bar checked off will now be selected and the multi-select toolbar will appear at the bottom of the page. You can now apply Sprints, add an Importance value and more to all Features within the Lane selected with a click of a button.

  • If you check the checkbox in the bottom toolbar, all Features in all Lanes will be selected.

  • To delete a Lane, hover over it and click on the 'x'.

Color Coding your Story Map items

To further help you visualize your Story Map, you can highlight and arrange your Sections and Features using colors. Simply hover on the top-right corner of a Section or Feature box, and the color options will appear.

Note: Activities, Lanes and Color Codes are visual elements used solely in Story Mapping.

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