Story Mapping: Making Work Visible
Ever found yourself lost in the detail?
You’re about to start a new piece of work. Leaders want forecasts, the team wants clarity and stakeholders want confidence. Everyone’s staring at a flat backlog, drowning in tasks with no real sense of why.
Story Mapping is one of our favourite ways to cut through the noise and reconnect people with outcomes, quickly and simply.
What is a Story Map?
A Story Map is a two-dimensional picture of work:
Top row = goals - the big things we’re trying to achieve.
Columns underneath = activities - the steps people take to get there.
The goals and activities tell a story of how someone gets a job done, presented in a natural chronological flow.
Shout out to Jeff Patton, the original creator of User Story Mapping. His work has inspired a generation of teams (ours included!) and is well worth a read.
We’ve adapted his ideas into one of our favourite RAFTs (Rapid Agile Forecasting and Tracking techniques) and we use it all the time.
There are two common story maps we use in our coaching:
Customer Story Maps - showing the flow of how things get done from a customer’s perspective.
Team Story Maps - showing the flow of work from the delivery team’s perspective.
Both bring the big picture into view quickly. They’re not detailed process charts or workflow models.
They’re conversation starters - a way to create and validate our shared understanding without drowning in detail.
Why We Love It
Story Mapping is a favourite because it helps shift the conversation:
Creating visibility of the work and where it gets done.
Turning scattered tasks into a shared story.
Replacing guesswork with visible context.
Building buy-in and ownership across customers, leaders and teams.
Spotting blockers before they become real problems.
When We Use It
We reach for our Story Mapping RAFT when:
A team is kicking off a new initiative.
Leaders want clarity on scope.
Stakeholders need to align on priorities.
We’re about to slice a roadmap into something deliverable.
We need to clarify how work actually gets done.
How We Do It
Instead of a step-by-step checklist, here’s the workshop itself shown as a story map. It’s a simple way to demonstrate the approach while giving you a taste of what the session feels and looks like.
Story mapping works well both in person or digitally but in our experience, nothing beats a wall full of stickies and the energy of people figuring things out together.
Things to Look Out For
Story maps can get big - they often take up a whole wall (or a very large digital board). Big maps spark conversations that smaller documents often miss.
They’re not permanent - the real value is in the conversation while building and refining the map, not in keeping it perfectly polished afterwards.
Facilitation matters - without someone guiding, it can be easy to get stuck in the weeds. Keep the pace moving and bring people back to the goals.
Different journeys are fine - not every customer or team member follows the same path. Use conversation to explain variations rather than complicating the map with logic.
They can feel messy - and that’s OK. Messiness usually means you’re surfacing real complexity. Use prioritisation and pain/gain overlays to find clarity.
Digital tools help, but … Miro, MURAL and Whiteboard work but nothing beats a wall of stickies and the buzz of people figuring things out together.
Don’t aim for perfect - a story map gives you just enough to move forward. Perfection is the enemy of good.
Try It With Your Team
We recommend doing your first story map on something very familiar. This means you can focus on learning the technique first. In our training courses we often use a Getting Ready to go to Work scenario - simple, quick, and surprisingly effective.
Our RAFT Series
✦ Story Mapping is one of our CoLab RAFTs - Rapid Agile Forecasting & Tracking techniques. Practical tools we use every day in our coaching and training to help teams make work visible and performance-focused.
Version 1 - updated on 5 September 2025
