The Scenario
A fintech startup is building a personal budgeting app. They have 40 user stories but can only ship 15 in the MVP. The CEO wants to launch in 8 weeks. The team needs to know what to build first and what to defer.
The Brief
Build a user story map. Organise stories into a backbone (user activities), a walking skeleton (minimum stories per activity), and release slices (MVP, v1.1, v1.2).
Deliverables
- A story map structure: User Activities (backbone) across the top, stories grouped vertically by priority
- The walking skeleton: the minimum set of stories that delivers an end-to-end user journey
- Release slices: MVP (15 stories), v1.1 (next 12), v1.2 (remaining) with rationale for each cut
- Three stories that were hard to cut from the MVP and why you cut them anyway
Submission Guidance
The walking skeleton is not the MVP. It is the minimum set of stories that lets a user complete the entire journey, even if poorly. The MVP adds enough polish to be shippable.
Submit Your Work
Your submission is graded against the rubric on the right. If you pass, you get a public Badge URL you can share on LinkedIn. There is no draft save, so work offline first and paste your finished response here.