Abstract: What is an easy way for team members to create quickly? Everyone will agree that having a framework and clear guidelines is the easiest approach. Today, I will introduce you to a four-two dial-thousand catties method – user story map.
Embrace the changing world with DevOps. In November 2020, The China DevOps Community Summit was held in Chengdu, which brought together a number of big names in the industry and continued to promote the development of the DevOps movement in China. Huawei cloud DevCloud senior product manager asked to share the theme “consensus on how to make the team to complete the demand and design communication”, introduces project requirements often appear in the design of the project team needs to understand is inconsistent, needs consensus does not reach the designated position, leading to demand rework, project delay, team members’ enthusiasm is not high response.
In daily project management requirements design, I believe that we will encounter a lot of why:
1. Why does the demand not meet the user’s idea?
2. Why are r&d requirements always delayed?
3. Why can’t project teams agree on requirements?
…
In the face of so many reasons above, where is the root cause? I have experienced software engineer, project manager, product manager and many other roles, so I also had a fierce PK with the opposites of the above roles, such as software engineer, and product manager mutual blackmailing; As a project manager, I often drove the team to speed up the delivery schedule. When I was a product manager, I would brainwash the R&D delivery team through all kinds of pie drawings. Start with that character as your starting point, understand from your own point of view and try to convince other characters to agree with you. But here’s where the problem becomes apparent:
1. Different understandings of requirements.
2. Although I understand the demand, I am not satisfied with it psychologically. I will think that the demand is of little value and it is OK to finish it carelessly.
3. The biggest problem is that users explode. What is this for?
4… .
Many of these problems are caused by one-way communication, without reaching a consensus or fully understanding the needs of users. To solve such problems, we need to participate in the design of requirements, so that we can reach a consensus on the problem, have a full understanding of each other, mobilize everyone’s enthusiasm from multiple perspectives, comprehensive understanding of the problem and achieve innovation. This is like spiderman fighting alone, always turning gray spider. But if we get to the Avengers, it’s going to explode.
So what’s an easy way for team members to get together quickly? Everyone will agree that having a framework and clear guidelines is the easiest approach. Today, I will introduce you to a four-two dial-thousand catties method – user story map.
What is a user Story map?
User story map definition
The user story map is to show the user’s needs vividly in front of the team in the way of storytelling + graphics, so that the team can comprehensively sort out, discuss and confirm the content contained in the story. It can understand the product process from the user’s perspective and help us find the pain points of users and the stage of product problems, so as to optimize the product in a targeted way. Therefore, it is very suitable for co-creation design of product requirements. User story maps require the participation of all relevant actors, including: product managers, development managers, software engineers, designers, users, and sometimes senior leaders.
In short, keep in mind that this is a process of full participation in design, problem finding and requirement insight from multiple perspectives.
From the perspective of looking at users, a standard user story map generally consists of three main components:
1) User: Persona, user goals/needs;
2) Users and products: doing, Touch point, thinking, feeling/experience;
3) Product opportunities: Pain points and opportunities.
How to map the user experience?
According to the previous introduction, the whole user story map is actually a puzzle process of the project team and the user. All the information that needs to be filled out in the user story map is filled out by working together, without complicated cooperation process or too many steps. There are four steps to creating a user story map:
Below we use “Design requirements of Huawei Open Source Mirror site Products” to explain how to make user story map. In order to illustrate the process of making user story map, we cut and abstract the relevant information. (Huawei Open Source Image Site is an open source component provided by Huawei Cloud: Mirrors.huaweicloud.com/)
1. User definition
The main purpose of user definition is to be able to draw a picture of the user, find out the basic characteristics of the user, behavioral characteristics, user goals, and be very clear about who your product is designed for. The user definition method can be as follows, first hang a typical person’s avatar, define the name. Then, it focuses on demographic attributes, behavioral characteristics, user goals and other dimensions.
2. Backbone stories
According to the user portrait, clear the user to complete the task stage and user goals. In this case, the user’s goal is the user’s requirements or requirements during the entire process of downloading the image and registering as a Huawei cloud member. Listing the user goals allows us to really think about what the user wants at each point. For example, the use process and objectives of mirror station users are as follows:
3. Break down the story
1) Sorting out user behaviors and contact points:
The user story is disassembled according to the main story and goal of the user, which mainly designs the touch points, user behavior, and improves the analysis of the user’s emotion and psychology. Firstly, the contact points between users and mirror site products are sorted out, and then the key behaviors of users are sorted out according to the contact points, and then the psychology and emotions of users are understood through behaviors.
2) Curve of users’ thoughts and emotions:
According to the user behavior of the corresponding stage, write down the thinking and thoughts of the user at that time, and sort them out in the form of entries. Then, the emotions of each node of the user are extracted. In order to prevent errors caused by personal subjective judgment, it is suggested that two people in a group use the same data to extract emotions.
4. Communicate and confirm – summarize pain points and opportunity points
Through the behavior and emotion curves of users at each stage, the pain points and problems at each stage are sorted out, and the reasons behind the pain points are considered. What measures can be taken to meet users’ goals and improve users’ experience are opportunity points.
5. Complete user story map
After sorting through the above, we have a complete version of the user story map. Subsequent map can be sorted out and beautification output. And according to the sorted out opportunities, according to the importance of the degree and degree of difficulty to arrange the implementation of priority. Optimize pain points in the user experience map to help users achieve their goals or set the direction for new product features.
conclusion
This article uses huawei open source image site as an example to describe the process of making a user story map.
A user story map is simply an interesting jigsaw puzzle that allows you to gain insight into your audience and discover product opportunities. In practical work, in addition to filling in the items listed in this paper, relevant jigsaw items can be added, so as to discover user needs more comprehensively.
It is not possible to capture and write all the requirements and stories correctly in the early stages of a project, nor is it possible to capture all the stories in a single phase using a user story map. The user story is not a two-dimensional product, but should be three-dimensional, and the dimension of time should be added. New user stories of the product should be added over time and at different stages of the product. Gradually add and optimize various story maps to keep pace with The Times.
Because it is the result of common insight, it is good at consensus, empathy, and finding problems from multiple perspectives.
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