STORY MAPPING WORKSHOP
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. Instead, everyone's staring at a flat backlog, drowning in tasks with no real sense of why.
Does it sound familiar?
This practical half-day workshop introduces you to Story Mapping - one of our favourite techniques for making work visible and reconnecting people with outcomes.
The Problem with Flat Backlogs
Your backlog is growing faster than you can deliver. Every task looks equally important (or equally urgent). The team can't see how their work connects to the bigger picture. Stakeholders keep asking "when will it be done?" and you're making educated guesses at best.
Meanwhile, everyone's working hard but nobody's confident you're working on the right things.
You're not lacking information. You're drowning in it. You can’t decide if your backlog is helping or hiding the work?
What you need is a way to see the whole story without getting lost in every detail.
You're a TEAM trying to deliver something that matters
If you want to align on priorities and deliver with confidence, you need to be able to see the whole story. It doesn't matter how well you've broken down the work or how detailed your acceptance criteria are. If your team can't see the big picture, they won't understand what matters most.
Story Mapping helps teams move beyond flat backlogs and scattered tasks to actually see the work.
It's not another framework to follow. It's a visual way to have better conversations about what you're building and why.
What You'll Learn
This isn't a theory session, it's hands-on practice with techniques you'll use the next day.
By the end of this half-day workshop, you'll be able to:
Explain the purpose and benefits of Story Mapping and why it works better than flat backlogs for creating shared understanding.
Create both types of story maps - Customer Story Maps for user journeys and Team Story Maps for delivery processes. You'll know when to use each type and how they complement each other.
Use the chessboard technique to manage the size and complexity of story maps by reducing them to a simple 8x8 structure.
Overlay Pain and Gain to identify where things aren't working well and where opportunities are hiding.
Apply this immediately - you'll leave with practical experience you can use immediately with your teams.
How the Workshop Works
Introduction to Story Mapping - why we use it and how it helps teams connect with outcomes.
Customer vs Team Story Maps - understand the two perspectives and how they complement each other.
Hands-on Practice - build two story maps: one for a team process and one for a customer journey. You'll experience how Story Mapping builds a shared view of work.
The Chessboard Technique - learn how to manage size and complexity by reducing story maps to a simple 8x8 structure.
Overlay Pain and Gain - identify where things aren't working well and where opportunities exist.
Customer vs Team Story Maps in Practice - learn when to use each type and how each supports different conversations.
Wrap Up - open questions and discussion on applying Story Mapping in your real-world settings.
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.
Who This Workshop Is For
This workshop is ideal for:
Product Owners and Product Managers who are sick of being the only ones who understand how everything fits together
Delivery Leads and Scrum Masters who need better ways to forecast and make work visible
Business Analysts who are involved in defining work and want techniques that create genuine shared understanding
Anyone on customer-facing teams wanting to understand user journeys without writing novels
Delivery teams wanting to improve visibility of their own processes
You don't need prior experience with Story Mapping. You just need to be involved in defining or delivering work, and frustrated with tools that don't help people see the full picture.
What Story Mapping Does
Story Mapping helps you move beyond flat backlogs and scattered tasks to see the big picture.
It's a two-dimensional way of looking at work:
Top row = goals - the big things we're trying to achieve
Columns underneath = activities - the steps people take to get there
The result? A visual story of how work gets done, presented in a natural chronological flow.
Here's what changes when you can see the whole story:
You spot gaps and dependencies before they bite you. Leaders get the forecast clarity they need without drowning in detail. Teams understand the "why" behind their work. Stakeholders can see what's coming and when. Everyone's working from the same picture.
Story Mapping turns guesswork into visible context and scattered tasks into a shared understanding.
Story Mapping Makes Work Visible
Here's what changes when you can see the whole story:
01 - Spot gaps and dependencies before they bite you
When work is laid out visually, the missing pieces jump out. You'll see where things don't quite connect, where assumptions are hiding, and what's going to cause problems down the track.
02 - Give leaders the clarity they actually need
Instead of drowning them in detail or giving them vague promises, you show them the shape of the work. They can see what's coming, when, and why. No more "just trust us."
03 - Help teams understand the why behind their work
Teams stop feeling like order-takers and start seeing how their work creates outcomes. They understand what matters most and can make smart decisions when things change.
04 - Make forecasting less guesswork
You're not making promises based on hope. You're looking at visible work, spotting what's complex, and having honest conversations about what's achievable.
05 - Build actual buy-in across everyone
When people can see the work and contribute to shaping it, they own it. Customers, leaders, and teams are all looking at the same picture and making decisions together.
Two Ways of Seeing the Work
Story Mapping isn't one-size-fits-all. There are two types you'll learn in this workshop:
Customer Story Maps show the flow of how things get done from your customer's perspective. Perfect for understanding user journeys, clarifying what needs to be built, and keeping the customer at the center of conversations.
Team Story Maps show the flow of work from your delivery team's perspective. Brilliant for making your own processes visible, spotting where work gets stuck, and improving how you operate.
Both bring the big picture into view quickly. They're not detailed process charts or perfect documentation. They're conversation starters - ways to create and validate shared understanding without getting lost in every detail.
Our Approach to Story Mapping
Our workshop builds on the original work of Jeff Patton, the creator of User Story Mapping. His work has inspired a generation of teams (ours included!) and his book is genuinely worth reading. Link to Jeff's book.
We've adapted his ideas into one of our favourite RAFTs (Rapid Agile Forecasting and Tracking techniques) and we use it constantly in our coaching work.
Want to know more about how we use Story Mapping? Read our Story Mapping blog or download our free Getting Ready exercise to try it with your team.
DIY or Get Help?
You can learn Story Mapping on your own using our blog and free exercise. We've designed them to be practical and accessible.
If you’d prefer some help then please get in touch. There's a big difference between understanding a technique and successfully facilitating it with your team, especially the first time.
This workshop is for you if:
You want hands-on practice with an experienced facilitator before trying it with your team.
Your team needs alignment in a new technique and you want someone neutral to guide the conversation.
You're working on something important and don't want to learn a new technique by making mistakes.
You'd rather spend half a day learning it right than several attempts figuring it out.
We'll make sure you leave confident to use Story Mapping effectively, not just familiar with the concept.
Pricing & Details
Half-day in-person workshop (delivered at your site)
Choose either:
9:00 to 12:00
13:00 to 16:00
$3,750 for up to 10 participants, $250 per additional participant (maximum 15 participants)
The workshop includes all materials, facilitation and a deeper Story Mapping Kit you can use with your teams.
Need help with your actual work? After learning Story Mapping in the workshop, we can facilitate sessions on your real projects. We'll help you apply the technique to your customer journeys, team processes, or whatever needs clarity - building your confidence while tackling work that matters.
Ready to See the Whole Story?
If your team is drowning in flat backlogs and you're tired of everyone working hard without really knowing if you're focused on the right things, let's talk.
Email: toni@agilecolab.com
Phone: +64 4 390 1405
About CoLab
CoLab is a team of coaches and advisors based in Aotearoa New Zealand. We help teams and organisations lift their performance by making work visible, aligning on what matters, and building the capability to keep improving.
We're practical people who love learning and sharing what works. We work across product management, DevOps, organisational design, all with a lens to improve performance.
Story Mapping is one of the many techniques we use to help teams cut through complexity and focus on outcomes.