Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Post-PMF, Ana and Tom trace Léa's path when she closes a job in a basement with no signal.
What the team took away
The flow revealed the orphan case nobody had thought of: Marc deleting a job Léa is logging offline. It became a story in release 2 instead of a support ticket.
How to run it
Preparation
Invite the designer and the tech lead. Add the PM if the flow touches business rules (pricing, permissions, eligibility).
Send the entry point and the success state in one sentence each, the day before: 'the user arrives from X, the flow succeeds when Y'.
Prepare the board with the entry shape on the far left, the success shape on the far right, and a stock of three shapes: rectangle for screen, diamond for decision, red rectangle for error.
Agenda
10 min
Fix the ends Confirm the entry and the success state. Ask 'how does the user know they succeeded?' and write the answer in the success shape. If nobody can answer, stop and fix that first.
25 min
Happy path Draw the shortest path from entry to success, screen by screen. One rectangle per screen, one verb on each arrow. No decisions yet: the happy path has no forks.
25 min
Decisions Walk the happy path and at each screen ask 'what can the user choose or fail here?' Add a diamond for every real fork. Write the question inside the diamond, the answers on the arrows.
30 min
Errors and empty states For every diamond, draw the No branch to its end: an error screen, a retry, or a dead end. For every list or dashboard, add the empty state. This is where the tech lead earns their seat.
20 min
Data check Tech lead marks on each screen what data it needs and where it comes from. Any screen needing data the product does not have gets a red flag and an owner.
10 min
Count and close Count the screens and the error branches. Read the count aloud: that is the real size of the story. Number the screens in flow order and export.
Pitfalls
Do not draw the happy path and stop. A flow with no red rectangles has not been thought through, and the developers will find the branches in the sprint.
Do not put more than one question in a diamond. 'Is the user logged in and has a plan?' is two diamonds.
Do not describe screens in the flow. A rectangle says what the screen is for, wireframes say what is on it.
Afterwards
The flow becomes the screen list for the wireframes and the acceptance criteria for the story. Every diamond turns into a test case. Pin the flow next to the story map slice it belongs to.