Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Scale-up Fieldnote, quarter planning. Karim maps the activation objective with Tom, Ana, Julien and Priya.
What the team took away
The barcode scanner did not connect to any impact and left the quarter; the SMS one-tap login was promoted because it served two impacts.
How to run it
Preparation
Product, tech lead and a business owner who can defend the goal with a number. Six to eight people, no observers.
Agree the goal with the sponsor before the session and write it with a metric, a target and a date. The workshop starts from it, it does not debate it.
Prepare the four columns and a parking lot for 'features people came with'. They will arrive with a list; give it a place off the tree.
Bring the current backlog top 20 printed. You will map it onto the tree at the end.
Agenda
15 min
Lock the goal Read the goal. Ask 'how will we know we got there?' until there is a number and a date. If the group wants to change it, stop and call the sponsor.
25 min
Actors Who can move the metric up or down? Users, but also support, sales, partners, regulators. One sticky per actor, ranked by how much they can move the number.
45 min
Impacts For each top actor: what behavior change would move the metric? Write it as a verb ('renews earlier', 'invites a colleague'). Five to eight impacts, then dot vote the top 4.
10 min
Break Off the board.
50 min
Deliverables Only now: what could we build or do to cause each impact? Several options per impact, cheap ones first. Then paste the backlog top 20 and connect each to an impact. Unconnected items go in a 'no impact' box.
35 min
Choose the first branch Pick the one actor-impact path with the best ratio of expected movement to cost. Its deliverables become the next release. Everything else stays on the map, not in the backlog.
Pitfalls
If the group jumps to deliverables while filling impacts, cover the fourth column. The map only works in order.
Impacts written as features ('has a dashboard') are not behaviors. Ask 'and then what do they do differently?'.
Do not keep every branch alive. A map with twelve open branches is a backlog with arrows. Pick one, ship, remeasure, then open the next.
Afterwards
The chosen branch becomes the scope of the User story map or the next PRD. Backlog items in the 'no impact' box are archived with the map as justification. Remeasure the goal metric after each release and prune the tree.