Visual Planning

1. Brainstorm stories

To create a cluster map, start by reviewing your team’s purpose, then use simultaneous brainstorming (see “Work simultaneously”) to generate stories related to that purpose. You can create any stories you like, but keep them high level and avoid going into a lot of detail. You’re starting with the big-picture, long-term view.

For example, if your purpose is to improve conversion rates for your online shopping site, you might create stories such as “better mobile support,” “dedicated mobile app,” “curated product reviews,” “better check-out page,” and so on.

Figure 8-4. A cluster map

2. Cluster stories into increments

Once you’re done brainstorming, use affinity mapping to cluster the stories (see “Work simultaneously”), then divide the clusters into valuable increments (see “Valuable Increments”). Some stories will be valuable increments on their own; others will form a valuable increment when done together. For the latter, create a new story that represents the valuable increment as a whole.

Mark each story that represents a valuable increment. For physical cards, I like to use a fun sticker, like a star or smiley face. For virtual cards, I like to change the card color. The remaining stories can be kept or discarded depending on how useful you think they are.

3. Organize increments

Take a step back and think about the increments in the context of your team’s purpose, then reorganize them to better reflect how you think that purpose should be achieved. Some increments will be irrelevant, or too far in the future. They can be discarded or set aside.

At this point, you have a high-level plan showing possible increments that your team could work on. This is a good time to take a break and get feedback from team members, real customers, and other stakeholders who didn’t attend. Next, you’ll go into more detail.

1. Brainstorm stories and cluster into small increments

Creating the smallest valuable increments follows the same process as creating your first set of possible increments, but it’s more focused. Starting with your most valuable increment, brainstorm stories needed to accomplish that increment, then cluster them to identify smaller increments that are still independently releasable and valuable. Create story cards for those small increments, as needed, and mark the cards that represent valuable increments. The original, larger increment can be kept or discarded, depending on whether you think the context it provides is useful.

Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you have enough small, highest priority increments to fill your “smallest valuable increments” planning horizon. For example, if you use the planning horizons shown in Figure 8-2, you would stop when you had about three months’ worth of small increments.

Finally, look at the increments you haven’t broken down yet. Could any of them include small increments that are higher priority than the ones you already have? If so, break them down too.

3. Prioritize

When you’re done, take a step back and see if any new ideas occur to you. Then decide how to prioritize the small, high-priority increments. At a minimum, mark one to release first and another to tentatively do next. The remainder can be prioritized, or not, depending on your roadmap and forecasting needs.

If you’re using physical index cards, put the priority number on a small sticky note and stick it to the card. That way, when your priorities change, you can move the sticky notes without rewriting the cards.

That finishes off the “small increments” level of detail. This is another good time to take a break and get feedback.

4. Play the planning game

The final level of detail for your visual plan is to break your small increments into stories that are sized “just right.” Use the planning game to do so. When you’re done, you’ll have a set of stories for each of your highest-priority increments. Add each set to the board near its corresponding increment.

If you’re forecasting releases, you can add release dates to the board. The final result will look something like Figure 8-4.

Start with your goal. This is the “Why” of the impact map, and it goes in the center. Your goal should relate to your team’s purpose in some way. It might be a condensed version of your mission, the next relevant mission tests, or both. In an impact map, everything stems from the goal. This is the destination your map will show you how to reach. For the Team Sasquatch example (see “AN EXAMPLE PURPOSE”), the goal might be “100 paying teams.”

2. Brainstorm impacts

Although the next level of the impact map is “actors,” it’s usually best to brainstorm impacts next. This is the “How” of the impact map. How could people outside your team help you reach your goal? How could they hinder it? How do you want their behavior to change? If you created a context diagram (see “Boundaries and interactions”), the stakeholder groups listed in that diagram might help you come up with ideas.

For example, existing customers could “recommend us on social media” or industry journals could “post positive reviews.” Be sure to include negative impacts, such as regulators who “increase auditing requirements” or competitors who “change pricing model.” Talk about how the behavior is different than today: if regulators already require auditing, the impact isn’t “require audits,” it’s “increase auditing requirements.”

3. Incorporate actors

You’re likely to end up with a broad selection of potential impacts. Discard the ones that aren’t worth pursuing or are too far in the future. For the rest, identify the actors—groups outside your team, including other groups in your company—who will create the impacts. Put them in the map at the “Who” level, between the goal and their impacts.

Up until now, you’ve been thinking broadly and generating options. Now it’s time to focus your thinking. Which impacts are critical for meeting your goal? Which represent low-hanging fruit? Which represent assumptions that need to be tested? Choose the highest-priority impacts. In a group setting, dot voting can help (see “Work simultaneously”).

After you’ve prioritized the impacts, consider attaching concrete targets to the top impacts. For example, for the “recommend us on social media” impact, you could have a target of “100 social media recommendations per week.” This will help you understand your progress. Sometimes you’ll reach your target earlier than you expect and can switch priorities. Other times, you’ll learn that your efforts aren’t making a difference, and you need to do more to test your assumptions.

5. Brainstorm increments

Now you’re ready for the “What” of the impact map. These are your possible increments. It’s tempting to think of increments as the most important part of the map, but they’re not! The purpose of impact mapping is to focus your attention on your goal and the impacts you want to achieve (or mitigate). Increments are what you use to do so, but it’s like saying your car is the most important part of a road atlas. Necessary for the trip, yes. The map—no.

Finish up as described in “Breaking Down Increments”. The final result will look like Figure 8-5.

1. Create the chart

To create the chart, draw a large graph on your visual planning board or virtual equivalent. Label the vertical axis from –3 to +3, representing outcomes from “very bad“ to “very good,” and draw a horizontal dashed line at the “0” mark. For the horizontal axis, label a range from “Won’t happen” to “50/50” to “Will happen.” Draw a vertical dashed line at the “50/50” mark.

2. Brainstorm possible outcomes

Now use simultaneous brainstorming to think of what might happen in your team’s future—to the team, your stakeholders, and your software. Write each one on an index card. Be sure to think of positive results as well as negative.

After the cards are on the board, take a moment to review and adjust their positions. This can be done simultaneously. The result will look something like Figure 8-6.

4. Prioritize outcomes and create plan

Next, use dot voting to choose the outcomes that are most important for your team to address. You can use these priorities as input into one of the other visualizations. If you’re using the prospective analysis as a standalone visualization, brainstorm potential increments that will help achieve positive outcomes and mitigate negative outcomes. Add them next to the chart with arrows pointing to their corresponding cards.

Finally, break the potential increments down further as described in “Breaking Down Increments”.

1. Determine scope

To create a story map, start by reviewing your purpose and context. Who are the users of your software? Who are the buyers who will pay for it? What are the other software systems that will interact with it? What benefits do they each get? How does that relate to your team’s purpose and the value your organization expects?

Based on that background, decide which topic, or topics, your story map will cover. You don’t need to map everything. As Jeff Patton says, “Creating a map is just telling a story.”⁸ Choose a beginning and an end for your story. In the case of our online shopping site example, you might choose to tell the story of what happens when someone purchases an item.

Next, decide if you’re going to create a now map or a later map. A “now” map describes what people do today. It helps you put yourself in your users’ shoes. You should usually start with a “now” map, unless you already have a good understanding of how your software will be used.

Create your story map by literally telling the story of what happens: first this happens, then this, then that. It can cut across multiple users and systems: “I do this, then Tatyana does that, then the backend system does this other thing.”

Write each step (also called a user task9) on an index card, sticky note, or virtual equivalent. For the online shopping site example, you might create steps such as “search for item,” “read reviews,” “add to cart,” “click ‘check out’,” and so on. Put them in order from first to last.

If you’re creating a “now” map, take this opportunity to add notes about how things work in practice. Make notes about rough spots and what works well. You can also note how long steps take or how often they occur—anything that you think will be useful later, when you think about improvement.

After you’ve created the steps, review the whole map from beginning to end and fill in any gaps. Then expand it. How do other people do things differently? What happens when something goes wrong? What about when everything goes perfectly? Create new sticky notes for these variations and add them in a vertical line below their corresponding step. Finally, look at your original set of steps and move any that seem like extra details below their corresponding step as well.

As you work, you’ll come up with new ideas that require you to reorganize your map. That’s healthy. When you’re done, you’ll have a horizontal line of steps that tells a story of what users do, and vertical lines of variations, alternatives, and details hanging down from that horizontal line. You should be able to “walk the map,” from first to last, choosing different steps from each column to tell different versions of the same story.

In some cases, different people will have different opinions about how to order the steps. Just choose an order that’s fairly typical. As long as you can tell a story that makes sense, the exact order of steps isn’t important.

Next, look at the outcomes (the horizontal lanes). Which of these can be released separately? Sometimes, each outcome represents a valuable increment. You might even be able to split the steps in an outcome into multiple increments. At other times, you’ll group multiple outcomes together to form an increment. Draw boxes around the increments. The result will look something like Figure 8-7. This is another good opportunity to take a break and get feedback.

7. Play the planning game

The resulting boxes are your smallest valuable increments. Next, you’ll use the planning game to refine them further. The “later” steps, details, and variations in each box are the stories you’ll take into the planning game. When you’re done, put the resulting stories back into your story map.