What is user story mapping, and what value does it create for the business clients of a project?

Remember to convey your understanding that story mapping is a team effort. The Product Owner is a key participant, but story mapping is highly collaborative, and ownership is shared across the Scrum team and their business partners.

User story mapping is a process of creating a visual map of the stories for a product and how they could be incrementally developed to add value over the course of a project. Story mapping sessions are typically facilitated by Product Owners or Scrum Masters and include the development team and key stakeholders. The result is a big-picture representation of how all of the pieces of a product will come together and add value over time.

User story mapping is helpful because it fosters alignment between the customers and the Scrum team. It shows everyone how the product will come together and allows the group to discuss the available options around to develop the best possible value stream. Once created, the user story map can be used to socialize the plan and gain buy-in from user groups and management.