Example Mapping
It is probably the technique with the best effort-to-result ratio in working with stories. It builds on the third C of the story, confirmation (see "Acceptance criteria"), and turns a vague conversation into an artifact that can be read.
Rules and examples
A business rule is a condition that the behavior must always respect. Some are written down (regulations, a contract, a policy); others live in the head of whoever knows the domain and go unsaid because they seem obvious, and those are the ones that sink deliveries. A single question finds them best, and it is worth memorizing: is there any context in which this would be different?
An example is a specific case, with specific data, that shows the rule in action. Its purpose is to make disagreement visible: two people can nod along to an abstract rule and then disagree as soon as a piece of data is put in front of them. Three kinds are needed, in this order: the normal case, the edge case (the boundary, the maximum, zero, the empty value), and the negative case (what must not happen). What is not needed is to exhaust every combination: examples illustrate, and exhaustiveness belongs to test design.
The four card types
The protocol is deliberately simple and uses four colors:
| Color | Content |
|---|---|
| Yellow | The story. It goes at the top, and there is only one. |
| Blue | Each business rule of the story. |
| Green | Each example, placed under the rule it illustrates. |
| Red | Each question that no one in the session can answer. |
The yellow card goes at the top, and the group places rules beneath it, examples under each rule, and questions off to one side. The stated duration (about 25 minutes for a well-understood story) is part of the technique: if the session doesn't wrap up in that time, that fact is itself information. And there is an explicit prohibition: no Gherkin is written during the session; precise formulation comes later, and mixing it with discovery bogs the conversation down in arguments over syntax.
Reading the map as a diagnosis
This is what makes the technique valuable beyond the conversation: the resulting map can be read as a measuring instrument.
- Many red cards (questions): the story is not ready. Don't estimate it or bring it into the sprint; look for answers, and perhaps run a spike.
- Many blue cards (rules): the story is too big. Each rule or group of rules is a candidate for a story of its own.
- A rule with a great many examples: it is probably not one rule but several poorly stated ones. It's worth breaking it down.
- Few rules, clear examples, and no questions: the story is ready, and its acceptance criteria are already written.
Wynne recommends practicing it every couple of days with upcoming stories, rather than saving it for the difficult ones: it is in the stories that seemed easy that the missing rule usually turns up.
Variants worth knowing
- Feature Mapping (John Ferguson Smart) adds the user journey and the tasks, and works well when the story has a flow with several steps.
- OOPSI (Jenny Martin) works through outcomes, outputs, processes, scenarios, and inputs, and helps frame a set of stories before drilling down into individual ones.
Both share the central idea: discover with specific examples before formulating.
Common mistake
Writing Gherkin in the discovery session. When the group starts drafting "Given / When / Then," the discussion shifts to syntax and the missing rules stop surfacing. Example Mapping discovers; formulating scenarios is a later step. Equally harmful is ignoring the red cards: a question with no owner and no deadline resurfaces mid-sprint as a blocker.
Resources
🏦 Skill User storiesState of the art and development guide · Skill Arena
📄 Historias de usuario v.5.0 [User Stories v.5.0, in Spanish]Free download · Scrum Manager · Jan 2026
📄 Scrum Master en equipos con IA v.1.0 [Scrum Master in Teams with AI v.1.0, in Spanish]Free download · Scrum Manager
References
- Wynne, Matt. (2015). "Introducing Example Mapping." Cucumber Blog.
- Adzic, Gojko. (2011). Specification by Example. Manning.
- Smart, John Ferguson. (2019). "Feature Mapping – a simpler alternative to Example Mapping."
See also
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