User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton

Map the user's journey left to right, then slice a thin walking skeleton.

Three takeaways for AI PMs

• Map the journey before the backlog
• Put the model's wrong answers on the map: Add a row under each AI step for what the user does when the output is bad.
• Slice a walking skeleton first: The first release should let a user get through the whole journey, including the fallback, with the least capable version of each step.

Do this Monday

• In your next refinement session, replace the backlog walk-through with a thirty-minute mapping of the user's journey for the top feature.
• Before the next spec review, add a fallback row under every AI step and ask the designer to sketch each one.
• Before the next release cut, draw the first horizontal slice and confirm a user can complete the journey on it, however thinly.