by Jeff Patton: www.agileproductdesign.com/presentations/user_story_mapping/

identify holes and omissions in your backlog

…. plan holistic releases

…. supports ad hoc day to day conversations about the system

…. understand the big picture

from “How you slice it” pdf:

Design your project in working layers to avoid half-baked incremental releases

…. When using use cases, focus first on those where the actors are a single user and the system. Avoid planning with use cases that describe the internal workings of the system .

… usage sequence

from presentation:

User Story Mapping is an an approach to Organizing and Prioritizing user stories

Unlike typical user story backlogs, Story Maps:

• make visible the workflow or value chain
• show the relationships of larger stories to their child stories
• help confirm the completeness of your backlog
• provide a useful context for prioritization
• Plan releases in complete and valuable slices of functionality.

Story Maps support the primary intent of user stories, rich discussion

The foundational building block of a story map is the user task