# User Story Mapping Workshop

> Use when someone wants to be guided interactively through building a story map — step by step through scope, personas, backbone activities, tasks, and release slices via adaptive questions. Triggers on: "walk me through story mapping".

- Skill: `newkayak12/user-story-mapping-workshop` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 5 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add newkayak12/user-story-mapping-workshop`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/newkayak12/user-story-mapping-workshop/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: newkayak12 (https://skillmd.com/u/newkayak12)
- Updated: 2026-09-21
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/newkayak12/user-story-mapping-workshop

---

## Standing Mandates

- ALWAYS start with user goals before moving to activities and tasks — goal-first, task-second.
- ALWAYS make release decisions as explicit horizontal slices, not vague 'MVP' labels.
- NEVER let technical layer thinking dominate the backbone structure.
- NEVER proceed to task decomposition without participants validating the backbone.


## When to Use / When Not to Use

**Use when:**
- Starting a new product or major feature and scope is not yet clear
- Reframing an existing flat backlog into a visual, narrative map
- Aligning stakeholders on scope, MVP, and release slices
- Running a facilitated planning session with a team

**Not for:**
- Generating a map when context is already defined (use user-story-mapping)
- Single-feature or single-story scoping
- Technical refactoring work with no user workflow

## What Claude Does / What You Do

| Claude | You |
|--------|-----|
| Asks 5 adaptive questions to discover scope, personas, and activities | Provides context and makes judgment calls |
| Generates backbone activities from answers | Approves or modifies the backbone |
| Proposes tasks per activity with priority ordering | Confirms priorities reflect real user needs |
| Draws release slices (Walking Skeleton, R2, R3) | Validates scope feasibility with engineering |
| Flags anti-patterns (technical layers vs. user workflow) | Presents the final map to the team |

## Related Skills

- `../user-story-mapping/SKILL.md` — use this when context is already defined and you want a map produced directly
- `../user-story/SKILL.md` — tasks from the map become individual user stories
- `../user-story-splitting/SKILL.md` — large tasks need splitting before authoring stories


## Application

This interactive skill asks **up to 5 adaptive questions**, offering **3-4 enumerated options** at each step.

Use `template.md` for the facilitation agenda and outputs checklist.

Interaction pattern: Use one-step-at-a-time flow with numbered recommendations at decision points and quick-select options for regular questions. If the user asks for a single-shot output, skip the multi-turn facilitation.

---

### Step 0: Gather Context (Before Questions)

**Agent suggests:**

Before we create your story map, let's gather context:

**Product/Feature Context:**
- What system or feature are you mapping?
- Product concept, PRD draft, or existing backlog
- Website copy, positioning materials, or user flows
- Existing user stories (if transitioning from flat backlog)

**User Context:**
- Target personas or user segments
- User research, interviews, or journey maps
- Jobs-to-be-done or problem statements

**You can paste this content directly, or describe the system briefly.**

---

### Question 1: Define Scope

**Agent asks:**
"What are you mapping? (What's the scope?)"

**Offer 4 enumerated options:**

1. **Entire product** — "Full end-to-end system from discovery to completion" (Common for new products or full rewrites)
2. **Major feature area** — "Specific workflow within a larger product (e.g., 'onboarding,' 'checkout,' 'reporting')" (Common for feature launches)
3. **User journey** — "Specific user goal or job-to-be-done (e.g., 'hire a contractor,' 'file taxes')" (Common for JTBD-driven mapping)
4. **Redesign/refactor** — "Existing product/feature being rebuilt or simplified" (Common for legacy system modernization)

**Or describe your specific scope.**

**User response:** [Selection or custom]

---

### Question 2: Identify Users/Personas

**Agent asks:**
"Who are the primary users for this map? (List personas or user segments.)"

**Offer 4 enumerated options:**

1. **Single persona** — "One primary user type (e.g., 'small business owner')" (Simplifies mapping, good for MVP)
2. **Multiple personas, shared workflow** — "Different user types, same core activities (e.g., 'buyer' and 'seller' both browse listings)" (Common for marketplaces)
3. **Multiple personas, different workflows** — "Different user types with distinct workflows (e.g., 'admin' vs. 'end user')" (Requires separate maps or swim lanes)
4. **Roles within organization** — "Different job functions (e.g., 'PM,' 'designer,' 'engineer')" (Common for internal tools)

**Or describe your users.**

**Adaptation:** Use personas from context provided in Step 0 (proto-personas, JTBD, etc.)

**User response:** [Selection or custom]

---

### Question 3: Generate Backbone (Activities)

**Agent says:**
"Let's build the backbone—the narrative flow of activities users perform to accomplish their goal."

**Agent generates 5-8 activities** based on scope (Q1) and users (Q2), arranged left-to-right in workflow order.

Before presenting backbone activities to the user: if think-tool is available, invoke it to check — "Do any of these activity names map to a technical layer (frontend, backend, API, database, deployment) rather than a user workflow step?" If yes, regenerate before surfacing.

**Example (if Scope = "E-commerce checkout"):**

```
Backbone Activities (left to right):

1. Browse Products
2. Add to Cart
3. Review Cart
4. Enter Shipping Info
5. Enter Payment Info
6. Confirm Order
7. Receive Confirmation
```

**Agent asks:**
"Does this backbone capture the full workflow? Should we add, remove, or reorder activities?"

**User response:** [Approve, modify, or add custom activities]

---

### Question 4: Generate User Tasks (Under Each Activity)

**Agent says:**
"Now let's add user tasks under each activity, organized by priority (top = must-have, bottom = nice-to-have)."

**Agent generates 3-5 user tasks per activity**, arranged vertically by priority.

**Example (for Activity 2: "Add to Cart"):**

```
Add to Cart (Activity)
├─ Add single item to cart (must-have, walking skeleton)
├─ Adjust quantity (must-have)
├─ Add multiple items at once (should-have)
├─ Save item for later (nice-to-have)
└─ Add gift wrapping (nice-to-have)
```

**Agent repeats for all backbone activities**, showing the full map.

**Agent asks:**
"Does this capture the key tasks? Are priorities correct (top = MVP, bottom = later releases)?"

**User response:** [Approve, modify, or add custom tasks]

---

### Question 5: Identify Release Slices (Walking Skeleton + Increments)

**Agent says:**
"Let's define release slices by drawing horizontal lines across the map."

**Agent generates 3 release slices:**

**Release 1 (Walking Skeleton):** Top-priority tasks across all activities—minimal end-to-end functionality

**Release 2 (Next Increment):** Second-priority tasks that enhance the core workflow

**Release 3 (Polish/Expansion):** Third-priority tasks (nice-to-haves, edge cases, optimizations)

**Example:**

```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Release 1 (Walking Skeleton):
- Browse products (basic list view)
- Add single item to cart
- Review cart (line items + total)
- Enter shipping info (name, address)
- Enter payment info (credit card only)
- Confirm order (basic confirmation)
- Receive email confirmation
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Release 2 (Enhanced):
- Product filtering/search
- Adjust quantity in cart
- Save for later
- Multiple shipping options
- Multiple payment methods
- Order tracking link
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Release 3 (Polish):
- Product recommendations
- Guest checkout
- Gift wrapping
- Promo codes
- Advanced payment options
- Post-purchase surveys
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```

**Agent asks:**
"Do these release slices make sense? Should we adjust scope or priorities?"

**User response:** [Approve or modify]

---

### Output: User Story Map

After completing the flow, generate the map using the structure in `references/output-template.md`.

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