Session Brief: Example Mapping

Goal

Artifact: Example Map

Working Question

Which concrete examples show this story is complete, and what rule connects them?

Context

Story title and draft acceptance criteria; current implementation of the closest flow; known edge cases from production; linked designs; estimated delivery slice.

Setup

• Format: Method session
• Duration: 25-45 min per story
• Mode: Workshop
• Participants: One facilitator (usually Product Owner or BA), one person from development, one person from QA or testing. Optionally a domain expert for corner cases. Maximum six people, otherwise discussion becomes slow.
• Owner: One facilitator (usually Product Owner or BA), one person from development, one person from QA or testing
• Participation mode: Team round, shared work and alignment
• Outcome logic: Finish artifact

Participation Logic

Use the session for shared understanding. Contributions are collected visibly, assumptions are aligned, and open differences remain traceable in the artifact.

Outcome Logic

The session works directly toward Example Map. After the session, the artifact should be shareable, reviewable, or reusable.

Input

Whiteboard or Miro board with four colors of stickies (yellow story, blue rule, green example, red open question); timer; link to backlog item; known edge cases from support or logs.

Preparation

Place the story card in yellow in the center. Beneath it, horizontal bands for rules (blue). To the right, examples (green) per rule. Red stickies are collected and not answered immediately. Set timer to 30 min, then decide on extension or postponement.

Agenda

1. 0-5 min (5 min) Owner: Facilitator Action: Read the story aloud and place it on the yellow card. Define context, goal, and out-of-scope briefly. No solution discussion, only understanding questions. Hint: If implementation discussion starts this early, pause the timer and move back to value and user intent. Output: Example Map

2. 5-20 min (15 min) Owner: Facilitator Action: Collect examples: concrete inputs and expected outputs with date, amount, status. Each example as a green card with clearly observable result. Hint: Examples like "normal case" are not usable. Ask for which user, which data, and what outcome. Explicitly request negative examples. Output: Acceptance Criteria

3. 20-30 min (10 min) Owner: Facilitator Action: Derive rules from examples: blue card over related examples. One rule per cluster of examples with the same behavior. Hint: If an example fits no rule, it is either an edge case (new rule) or out-of-scope (own story). Do not force it into an existing rule. Output: Open Questions

4. 30-40 min (10 min) Owner: Facilitator Action: Review red cards for open questions. For each question decide: clarify before implementation (owner and deadline) or document as assumption with risk. Hint: More than five red cards signal the story is not ready. Do not continue anyway, otherwise it returns through QA. Output: Example Map

5. 40-45 min (5 min) Owner: Owner Action: Review story splitting: if a rule belongs clearly after release, extract it as a separate story and prioritize it. Hint: An example map with more than eight rules is often several stories. Splitting is not a failure of the method, it is its core value. Output: Acceptance Criteria

6. Publish artifact (10 min) Owner: Owner Action: Check the artifact for completeness, define location, set version or status, and name review recipients. Output: Example Map

Closeout

• Update result artifact: Example Map
• Define location, version, and review recipients.
• Define owner, next step, and review date.

Example Map: Example Mapping

Working Question

Which concrete examples show this story is complete, and what rule connects them?

Context

Story title and draft acceptance criteria; current implementation of the closest flow; known edge cases from production; linked designs; estimated delivery slice.

Participants

• Owner: One facilitator (usually Product Owner or BA), one person from development, one person from QA or testing
• Participants: One facilitator (usually Product Owner or BA), one person from development, one person from QA or testing. Optionally a domain expert for corner cases. Maximum six people, otherwise discussion becomes slow.

Input

Whiteboard or Miro board with four colors of stickies (yellow story, blue rule, green example, red open question); timer; link to backlog item; known edge cases from support or logs.

Template

Example Mapping Checklist

• Goal and context clarified
• Input material gathered
• Participants and roles named
• Execution prepared according to the runsheet
• Output artifacts created
• Example Map updated
• Acceptance Criteria updated
• Open Questions updated
• Open questions documented
• Next step set with owner and date

Completion Check

• Example Map is complete enough for review:
• Location:
• Version / status:
• Review by:
• Next step:

Next Step

• Review result
• Mark open questions
• Schedule review or decision