Does your development organization suffer from the feature factory syndrome - churning out changes that don't add up to useful value for users? Is development consistently being held up because of unresolved dependencies? The root cause of these issues is a focus during planning on isolated user stories instead of the value stream and how stories connect across it to deliver meaningful outcomes to customers. In this session, you'll learn how to use Story Mapping to revolutionize your approach to agile release planning, enabling you to consistently and frequently deliver valuable features. Whether you’re a Business Analyst, Product Owner, or part of an Agile team, you'll gain a practical understanding and hands-on experience using this powerful tool to ensure that every sprint/iteration delivers market-ready value, plan MVPs to test hypotheses, visualize dependencies, identify workflow gaps and break down complex projects into manageable, actionable stories.

During the workshop, you'll learn and gain hands-on experience using the steps of the approach, as developed through the speaker's collaboration with Ivar Jacobson International on The Story Mapping Gameboard (a new resource hosted on Essence Workbench). By attending this session, you’ll be able to use Story Maps to plan the delivery of market-ready value every sprint/iteration, plan MVPs to test hypotheses, visualize dependencies, identify workflow gaps and break down complex projects into manageable, actionable stories.

Key Takeaways:
• Hands-on experience creating and applying Story Maps in agile planning.
• Practical strategies for delivering cohesive, market-ready value in every sprint.

Workshop. Presented IRL or virtually. Presented in the past IRL at BA & Beyond 2025 and Toronto Agile Community (2025); presented online for O'Reilly online (2024, 2025) and IIBA Tampa, Florida (2025). Requirements for IRL: Pod seating (groups of 5-6); 1 flipchart and set of post-it notes for each group of 5-6. Target audience: Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst