STORY MAPPING

 
 

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.

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

Here's what we see all the time:

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.

The real kicker? You're not lacking information. You're drowning in it. What you need is a way to see the whole story without getting lost in every detail.

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.

Two Types of Story Maps

In this workshop, you'll learn to create both:

Customer Story Maps - showing the flow of how things get done from a customer's perspective. Perfect for understanding user journeys and clarifying what needs to be built.

Team Story Maps - showing the flow of work from the delivery team's perspective. Brilliant for making your own processes visible and spotting where things get stuck.

Both bring the big picture into view quickly. They're not detailed process charts. They're conversation starters - a way to create and validate shared understanding without drowning in detail.

What You'll Learn

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 exist.

  • Apply Story Mapping in real-world settings - you'll leave with practical experience you can use immediately with your teams.

 

Who This Workshop Is For

This workshop is ideal for:

  • Product Owners and Product Managers who need better ways to align on priorities and communicate scope

  • Delivery Leads and Scrum Masters wanting to improve visibility and forecasting

  • Business Analysts involved in defining work

  • Anyone on customer-facing teams wanting to understand user journeys

  • Delivery teams wanting to improve visibility of their own processes

The workshop works well for groups needing better alignment, collaboration and focus on outcomes.

You don't need prior experience with Story Mapping. You just need to be involved in defining or delivering work and frustrated with flat backlogs that don't tell the full story.

 

How the Workshop Works

This isn't a lecture. It's hands-on practice with real techniques you'll use the next day.

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.

Our Approach

 

Pricing & Details

This 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 is well worth a read. 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 all the time 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.

Want to 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.

You might be more successful with a little help. 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 and you want someone neutral to guide the conversation

  • You're working on something important and don't want to learn by making mistakes

  • You'd rather spend half a day getting 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.

Half-day in-person workshop (delivered at your site)

Choose either:

  • 9:00 to 12:30

  • 13:00 to 16:30

$4,000 for up to 10 participants $149 per additional participant (maximum 15 participants)

The workshop includes all materials, facilitation, and a Story Mapping Kit you can use with your teams.

Ready to Make Your Work Visible?

If you're tired of flat backlogs and want to reconnect your team with outcomes, 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 perform at their best 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 and performance improvement.

Story Mapping is one of many techniques we use to help teams cut through complexity and focus on outcomes.