User story mapping templates

Creating a story map is a familiar exercise for most product teams. It gives you a way to visualize and organize your work based on the tasks your users are trying to complete. Grouping user stories or the new functionality that you are going to build into a user story map can help clarify which features will provide the most value to your customers — so you can prioritize accordingly.

In this guide, we have pulled together a set of user story mapping templates that you can use right away — either in Aha! software or within downloadable Word and Excel formats. But if you are new to this exercise, we suggest reading our guide to user story mapping first. This article offers a comprehensive overview of the benefits, challenges, and steps of the user story mapping process.

Folks who use Aha! software can create user story maps in both Aha! Notebooks and Aha! Roadmaps. Aha! Notebooks comes with the user story map template shown below. User story mapping is also built into the features section of Aha! Roadmaps.

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Explore user story mapping templates

A user story map represents a user's interactions with your product — each card on the map is a user story. By visually mapping out multiple user stories, you can display the customer journey and break it into parts. Ultimately this helps you design and build functionality that is focused on desired customer outcomes, instead of solely on development output or feature specifications.

Templates make this process simpler. As mentioned above, the user story map template in Aha! Notebooks allows you to build a user story map on a collaborative whiteboard and share it with your team. Colorful frames and sticky notes help you organize, mark up, and show the thinking behind your work.

In the example below, the sample content shows a flow for purchasing on an e-commerce site. At the top are "themes" that describe the key steps in this user journey. Each theme is then broken down into smaller epics and user stories. Within the table, user stories are ranked vertically by importance — that way, you can map the ideal path users should take from theme to theme (or left to right).

Once everything is mapped out, prioritized stories are grouped into releases. This helps you plan for what comes next — building and delivering this optimized experience for your customers.