Chris and Jeremy Lightsmith proposed similar sessions, and so chose to combine them into one. About 15 people showed up for an exercise-based session on generating requirements using the Story Mapping technique, which Chris first learned about from Jeff Patton. As I’ve done in the past, I served as the putative “client,” in my guise as editor-in-chief of a newspaper—come on, you remember newspapers, those things the Brits used to wrap fish back in the olden days? (BTW, the New York Times is now a mere 11 inches wide. I think this is the next step toward ceasing print publication, as it’s now conveniently laid out to be printed on your home printer.)
For the first phase, Jeremy interviewed me to tease out big
picture goals I had for a system to manage my work flow, from story assignment
to layout. “Trackability” was one, with the measurability factor being to lower the moment of “Oh s—t!”
moments per edition of the paper. Then participants broke into two groups and brainstormed for ten minutes to come up with a handful of goals for a fictional
new system for renting videos online, based on Netflix.
In round two, Chris interviewed me to determine the personas
involved. Then the groups reconvened and created personas for the users of the Netflix system.
In the final round, Chris conducted an abbreviated interview
tracing my work flow and breaking it down into rough-hewn user stories: “Assign a story to a writer,” “Assign a story to an issue,” “Submit story to art
department for layout.” After that, the groups worked on their Netflix user stories, and quickly got the hang of
it: “Add to queue,” “Sort by category,” etc.
For being so brief, the workshop operated on two levels:
On one level, the process showed that user stories, however granular they may come, are best woven out of whole cloth, that context is king, and if you get the big picture from the horse's mouth (ugh, mixed metaphor–where's a copy editor when you need one?), your user stories will almost write themselves.
On another level entirely, the exercises introduced them to the concept of the Story Map as a big-picture information radiator that helps developers working on highly granular user
stories keep their sense of connection to the big picture, and especially to
the end user. You could almost call it an empathy radiator.