It is vital for the team to have a crystal clear view over the big picture while diving into details day after day. That visualization will be the team’s orientation map so that they don’t feel lost and make the right decisions.
First start with the personas.
A persona is a rich description of a fictional person who represents a particular group of people using our product.
Тhe second visual, the story map, tells a story about personas doing something to reach a goal.
For example, a user of an online store wants to have a product delivered to their home or office at the end of the story. Identifying the stages, pre-service, service, post-service, give a map an outline. Each journey consists of a sequence of steps. Give each step a short title summarizing your persona’s experience and activity. Now you have the backbone. Draw it as a thick red line.
Then decompose the steps into stories below the backbone. Stories are defined around the tasks, sub-tasks, alternative tasks, and exceptions. Add enablers such as infrastructure and automation work.
Use a tape line to identify slices of user stories to be released together. Identify the target outcomes of your slice in a balloon to the left of the slice.
Finally comes the third visual – architecture.
There’s actually more than one visual in this category. Draw useful diagrams representing the key architecture decisions such as components diagrams and flowcharts.
Then organize the product architecture and planning meetings around the ESCREO wall where all ideas and decisions are visible. Don’t forget that people tend to use what they’ve created and encourage the team to make visuals of everything important aspect of the product.
Watch the video below to learn how to create your product-related visualizations so that they promote engagement, transparency, and teamwork.
