User Stories and Mapping Question
Hello Community,
I am writing to you as I would like to know how you would approach user story mapping for a certain project I am involved in. I work in a Benefits Administration organization. The project the team was involved in is a benefits enrollment user flow project. The person enrolling for his benefits would go through several pages, select his dependents, the prescription medicine he needs etc. This Benefits Enrollment product already exists and we are revamping the UX of the application. It's hard to break down user stories when all of the pages need to look the same and we can't have one page look severely different from the next page. The workflow experience of going through the pages should be seamless. Also, we have a deadline by the time annual enrollment comes around so that we have to complete the project by September. It must be ready for the users to use! In this case, how would you break down user stories into MVP vs. stretch? We need to have the pages look the same and can't have one page look like the old project and some pages look like the newly revamped one. I am sure some of you have been in this situation so I would like your input in breaking down this type of work!
Have you asked your Developers how they would break it down? Breaking it down into workable sizes is what they would do during refinement of the Product Backlog Items. They are the ones that will do the work and they are the ones that are closer to the activities. Let them do it.
BTW, it might be easier than you think if your developers are good and have adopted component design methods. Again, talk to the Developers.
What uncertainties are you trying to resolve by having MVPs and user story conversations in the first place? Why even use Scrum?
By the sound of it you are contemplating more of a reductionist approach...one through which a known body of work is broken down for completion.
Much does indeed seem to be already settled and decided: the underlying functionality, the constraints about what a revamped UX can and can't do, and the ability to actually complete this body of work by September.