Effective Agile product management is vital to the success of your business, but it can be challenging to translate business strategy into actionable tasks that create value for customers. That’s where Lucidspark comes in. It can help you visualize, ideate, iterate, and prioritize for more strategic product delivery.
This article's content is taken from the course, “Agile Product Management in Lucidspark,” available for free on our Learning Campus. In this self-paced course, you’ll learn how to use Lucidspark’s infinite canvas, features, and integrations to create user story maps and break down larger projects. We’ll share a sampling of course content in this article, and you can register for the course to access the rest!
User story mapping
One significant part of Agile product management is user story mapping, and that’s exactly where the course starts!
Agile epics are large bodies of work that can be broken down into features and user stories. They provide a useful framework for managing work and creating a hierarchy of product requirements.
This is the first area where Lucidspark can help. Teams can identify and understand the needs of end users for any given feature with this Lucidspark user persona template.
User stories traditionally follow this formula: As a [type of user], I want [a specific goal] so that [some reason]. Using Lucidspark’s infinite canvas to map out this formula provides an endless space for creative ideation.
Additional Lucidspark capabilities to support the user story mapping process include this free user story map template and Lucid Cards, which ensure everyone can access pertinent information from anywhere and leave comments in real time.
We recommend starting your user story map by using sticky notes to list in chronological order how a user would interact with the activity. Then, add sticky notes below to outline the steps a user could take to achieve the desired activity.
This can be a tedious process, but Lucidspark simplifies it so you only spend time on the most high-value activities.
Ideation and iterative product planning
A significant part of Agile product planning is input and collaboration between the customer and development team—this means a lot of ideation as Agile teams focus on meeting customer expectations and delivering value.
Lucidspark can help your team collect and document customer research by mining each customer interview or inputting survey responses to discover valuable insights. Use Lucidspark’s CSV import feature to insert feedback and data as sticky notes. Utilize the pen tool to ideate, adding ideas and connecting sticky notes to draw further insights. You can add tags to each sticky note to get organized (consider adding tags for different teams or areas of work), or use the Sort feature to group the sticky note by Container so stakeholders can easily visualize follow-up items.
And that’s just the beginning! Lucidspark will prepare your team for your upcoming iteration planning meeting in a flash.
Visualizing and prioritizing the product backlog
Product backlogs are another vital part of Agile product management. Providing a list of requirements for work to be done, the product backlog is the foundation for each iteration planning session. It should include all work items so nothing is left out or forgotten. Because the backlog is so comprehensive, transparency is needed throughout the entire organization.
Lucidspark, a virtual collaborative whiteboard, can help remote and hybrid teams organize and visualize their product backlog just as effectively (and maybe even more so!) than if they were managing it in person.
Timelines are a key feature during this step to help teams keep track of tasks. The product backlog template can also be useful here, allowing you to insert Lucid Cards for airfocus, Azure, Jira, Smartsheet, and more, connect them with epics, and organize them by color. You can also organize Lucid Cards on a priority spectrum to maximize efficiency and deliver the highest-quality product.
