Of all the tools I like to use when working with product development, storymapping is the most well-worn one in my kit. My first exposure to it was with Jeff Patton years ago, and its value as a thinking and planning tool continues to impress me. There is real value in seeing an experience laid out in an orderly way that invites collaboration, gets people moving in a physical space, and externalizes what people are thinking – “moving beyond hand-waving.” The only thing more surprising to me than the value of this practice is how few people use it. A principle I use is based on that very problem of practice – if someone in a meeting is waving their hands while explaining something, we need to get it out of their head in a visual form so that everyone sees it.
Given that, it should come as no surprise that as I was planning a wedding ceremony, I would fall back on storymapping as my tool of choice. Using one of the whiteboards in my office, we took turns capturing specific events that needed to be cared for and putting them along the timeline. What was nice: we could do this at our own pace, either of us walking by the office could pop in and post a sticky note for any random thought that came up.
After a few days, we had the universe of events gathered on the whiteboard, and we could sit and talk through them. We organized them from left to right in terms of sequence, and top to bottom for rough priority. Additional things popped up while we reviewed things, and it was easy to add them to the board. We organized, reorganized, refined, pared, and finally settled on the order. After we finished, I used the storymap to generate a Word document of the detailed tick-tock schedule for the day, which we brought to the rehearsal meeting. The planner and officiant were simultaneously impressed and maybe a little surprised at the level of detail we had scoped. We were able to refine the schedule even further, and land on a final schedule.
On the big day, the wedding proceeded without any hiccups. I remember expecting at least 1 thing to go wrong… and 1 thing did. There was a hand-off of flowers when the rings were given to the officiant. The kicker? It was the one step that never made it onto the storymap!
I love that a practice fundamental to my product work is flexible enough to be used for something like planning a wedding ceremony. I love even more that my wife and I were able to use it together, her having never tried this before.