I really like the new user story map feature! Something that would make it even better for me would be to remove the functionality where it automatically creates master features and features for everything added to the user story map.
Early in the ideation/definition process many of these ideas are essentially just notes (i.e. post-its) and may end up unused or combined later into something else entirely. As it works now, it creates a trail of orphaned features in the parking lot that have to be then manually cleaned up later - and which are not distinguishable from other items in the parking lot.
Instead, I would like to promote things in the user story map to features/MF's when I'm ready to put them in the backlog. It could also create the records automatically if they are put into a release.
We just added a new tool in whiteboards that enables you to add placeholder shapes for different record types. When you're done with planning and ready to transition them over to actionable work items in Aha! Roadmaps, open the right tab and select the records you want to convert.
Try these out for user story mapping, quarterly planning, PI planning, and more – we would love to hear what you think! You can learn more here: Aha! shapes.
Having it automatically sync between the Story Map and the Feature board is a disadvantage. The user should have the option so they are able to flush out ideas. And if you are integrated with ADO it makes it that much worse.
I also agree with all of these comments. We use the User story map for journey mapping, so the workflows identified may not equate to an epic or feature. Although, you would still want the option to commit it to an epic or feature. Instead of updating the user story map functionality, perhaps provide the ability to do journey mapping.
I fully agree. I like the story map feature very much, but in my opinion the stories in this map are usually still at the level of "Ideas" and not features that are actually planned for development. I think one user story map board that could contain both ideas and features would be a solution in my case.
Totally agree with this! Super frustrated when we were using the Story Mapping feature just simply trying to break down a new feature. We spent a LOT of time throwing ideas at the board and didn't let a single idea go un-documented. However, we quickly found that those "Ideas" quickly made our boards hard to use and required us to go in and delete all the ideas that did not make the MVP or any of the iterations that would come shortly after the MVP.
Would love to see this feature to allow us to throw ideas out at the user story level and decide if/when we want to make them a feature.
This is a struggle for our team as well. I had lots of clean up during testing and it messed up a couple of my roadmaps/releases I had to fix not completely aware of all the BE changes it was making. I concur a draft version would be great!
Agreed - I really like the brainstorming capability of a user story mapping exercise, but part of the goal in user story mapping is to decide what to do and what to set aside possibly forever. Automatically creating the items leads to a lot of clutter I need to clean up, which has led me to not really using the feature.
I'm excited to see more growth in this area, though. I'd love to meet with a team and walk them through a story map, have them get input on what's realistic or how to make adjustments, we agree together, and then say 'go' and it gets slotted into the releases.
I agree with Todd & Brian - I expected this to be similar to how I can choose when to sync an feature to Jira. I wanted to use this to get ideas out and make a rough plan for releases before I started working on the specifics on each card.
Agree with this.
I'd like story map cards to be independent, or linked to an Idea prior to being promoted to features so that the backlog isn't cluttered with items that haven't reached sufficient priority.
Story maps are a useful way to sort and prioritize ideas (in addition to your excellent score cards), which often results in discarding or indefinitely delaying stories. I prefer not to clutter up the backlog with items that would never reach dev.
1. idea achieves popularity
2. map idea into its functional area among other ideas and features to assist prioritization in broader context
3. promote to a feature targeted for a release