There are many different tools available when mapping out user stories. From very simple online resources to more comprehensive ones, there are plenty of options at your disposal. I’m going to break these down into two categories: free/low-cost resources and paid resources, which will make it easy for you to choose the one that suits your needs.
Here are simple but very effective tools to successfully map out your stories. The goodnews is that they come with free packages for users.
Microsoft Visio
Microsoft Visio is software used for creating a variety of diagrams and flowcharts. With this visualisation tool, users can create simple or more complex customer data diagrams. It also offers a wide variety of built-in shapes, objects, and stencils to work with. The main idea behind Visio is to make diagramming as easy as possible for the user and therefore simplifying the process of customer journey mapping. Note: this is a Microsoft product, sold as an addition to MS Office.
Pricing: Standard: $299, Professional: $589, and Pro for Office 365 $15/month.
Website: www.products.office.com
Easy agile (user story mapping for JIRA)
Easy Agile has an integration with Jira that lets you create user story maps with user stories taken directly from the task backlog. It means there’s no need to transfer the user story map to Jira and your team can start working on stories that have the highest priority immediately.
All you have to do is install it to get to the user story mapping feature, create an epic and from there, build out the user story map. All the information you add to your user story map will be updated to reflect changes in your Jira projects.
Bauer: Agile User Story Map for Jira
Agile User Story Map is another Jira add-on from a company called Bauer. Like Easy Agile, it also provides an alternative to the flat backlog feature in Jira to track your project’s bigger picture.
It gives you quite a lot of control over the user story mapping process, letting you create your map by dragging, dropping and rearranging boards.
It offers great flexibility as you’re able to arrange your user story map as you see fit. You can also add in story points as well as status indicators, such as “in progress” and “resolved”. It’s available on the Atlassian Marketplace for Jira cloud, data server and server.
StoriesOnBoard
StoriesOnBoard is a tool that lets you create user story maps that keep clients involved lets your team visualize your user personas and goals whenever they need to. It’s also highly collaborative, allowing you to add and work with any stakeholders you choose and to manage expectations.
StoriesOnBoard boasts many integrations, letting you perform user story mapping in Jira (you can display Jira issue keys on the cards you create) as well as integrating with other popular tools such as Slack and Google Suite. You can even integrate it with Trello, and send story cards to scrum boards, synching in real-time.
FeatureMap
If you’re looking for a cheap alternative to the tools listed above, then FeatureMap might be the solution you need at the moment. It also has a two-way integration with Jira and also lets you export your user story maps to Microsoft Word documents and their API lets you set up integrations with thousands of other tools.
Features that make user story mapping easy with feature maps are easy drag and drop features, unlimited map space and real-time synchronization and updates so your team is always kept in the loop.
Cardboard
CardBoard is a design tool used specifically for story mapping because it allows distributed teams an opportunity to collaborate. In other words, it’s a harmony of how we use Google Docs and Post-It Notes. Cardboard is in basic terms, a sticky note application that can be used for story mapping under the simple and fast concept of using sticky notes on a grid for better product storytelling. It is the digital version of having a physical board at the office and using Post-It’s to create ideas and discuss in groups.
With Cardboard, you can choose the color of the cards that you use in your user story maps and add images of your user personas to the map. You can easily create a backbone of epics and proceed to add in your user stories, dividing them up into swim lanes and release slices.
Custellence
Custellence is a very intuitive customer journey mapping tool. With this tool, users can create and share their customer maps easily with their team to encourage engagement and cross-functional teamwork. What’s great about Custellence is because of its simplicity, the learning curve is very low, meaning you can quickly and easily get team members on board and using the tool. It offers a flexible map structure, curve lanes (for customer emotions), unique image collection and much more.
Pricing: Free and paid plans starting €20,- user/month
Website: www.custellence.com
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle (created by OmniGroup) is a diagramming and customer journey mapping tool that can be used for everything from wireframe design to interior design. With this tool, users can create precise and neat customer journey maps that can then be shared with colleagues. Everyone from professional artists and designers to casual data mappers and beginning diagrammers can make use of OmniGraffle. What makes OmniGraffle exceptional is how easy it is to get started. They also offer a free trial to test out the tool first.
Pricing: $12.49/month for an iOS/Mac subscription and to $249.99 for Mac.
Website: www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle
Smaply
Smaply is a visual customer experience management software used for creating customer journey maps, personas and stakeholder maps. Journey maps can be visualised with different types of details e.g., storyboards, channels, live data for KPIs, backstage processes and more. Teams can share journey maps, comment on them, and create multiple types of exports, also including PowerPoint.
Journey maps can be linked to create hierarchies and visualise both the big picture and the details of experiences. The persona editor allows you to describe and define the context of customer types visually, like looking at real social user profiles. The mapping tool for stakeholders helps companies to visualise the product ecosystem and get a clearer picture of parties that impact their service.
Pricing: €25/month, Regular: €50/month, Business: €100/month, Enterprise: by request.
Website: www.smaply.com
IBM Journey Designer
IBM Journey Designer allows users to produce customer journey maps in minutes. Marketing, sales and customer service can collaboratively visualise cross-channel journeys, set common marketing goals and design tailored customer experiences for various priority segments in a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface. Users can also engage in conversations, send files and notify team members of any activities while building customer journeys.
Pricing: Not available
Website: www.ibm.com
Visual Paradigm
Visual Paradigm’s online Customer Journey Mapping and development tool suite helps you streamline the UX initiatives and automate the entire information acquisition process. You can zoom-in on a single customer journey in a specific channel. By understanding the customer journey you can improve customer retention and increase the conversion rates. It also includes various agile project tools such as the PM Process Tool, Agile Process Tool, Scaled Scrum Process and more.
Pricing: Depending on the package, they offer ‘Perpetual’- $99 to $1999 or ‘Subscription-based’ – $6 to $89/month.
Website: www.visualparadigm.com
Trello
Trello has all the features required for story mapping, but instead of robust images, it is a visual way to see lists. It is filled with lists and cards and allows comments, all making for quality, real-time discussions with the team. Managers can organize the backlog by adding due dates, creating checklists, labels, and it’s even connected to Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive for ease when uploading files. Trello will ensure that all the members of the user team are connected as it hosts an app for all devices with iOs, Android, Windows software, and even Kindle Fire tablets.
UpWave (formerly Symphonical)
The concept of UpWave is simple. It is a digital board with sticky notes for team collaboration in real-time. Just like most of the boards on this list, it has a drag & drop feature to add notes to plant and supervise your team’s activity. Some solid features of this story-mapping program are the text editor, note assignment, and the built-in calendar to help prioritize deliveries.
Craft
Craft is a powerful story-mapping program for product management, which allows “agile teams” to have a broader visual of story maps. It’s flexible and easy to manage. Its main features include the structured visuals, the drag & drop feature, the mobility which allows changing and prioritizing tasks, the linking of stories and sub-stories, and the real-time collaboration between teams and managers which allow up-to-date interaction on the project.
UXPressia
UXPressia is a cloud-based customer experience management platform that helps teams to visualise, share, present, and improve their customer journeys. They offer features like real-time online collaboration for multiple users, integrations with a variety of data sources, and a modern interface with an intuitive drag and drop environment.
Apart from customer journey mapping, UXPressia also offers flexible Customer/Buyer Persona and Impact Map builders and a variety of predefined templates with a possibility to build and share proprietary templates across the organisation.
Pricing: offers a free plan, package pricing (Starter) starts at $16/month.
Website: www.uxpressia.com
Conclusion
User Story Mapping is a great way to organize and manage ideas and requirements during the software creation process. Take action today!