Misunderstandings are expensive. Here’s how we solve them with story mapping.

Assumptions lead to misunderstandings, slowdowns, and work that has to be redone. Too often, the same people who were nodding on the previous call when asked, “Does this make sense to everyone?” or “Are we all on the same page?” come to the next call saying, “That’s not what I thought we agreed on.”

We can laugh at examples of this in the world around us, like the hilarious messages on birthday cakes that happen when there’s a breakdown between what customers order and what the bakery delivers.

It’s not as funny for the bakeries who have to burn profits on redoing cakes, or for the customers who wind up with (from their perspective) a typo instead of the message they wanted.

Even worse, this type of situation can become a pattern in organizations. When it does, it’s usually costing you time, money, and energy that would have helped you grow. Long-term, repeated miscommunications are probably keeping you from achieving your goals as a team. Multiply this across an entire organization and it can ruin your opportunities for growth.

This happens because agreement is easy to get, but shared understanding is not.

Identifying the places where communication breaks down

Miscommunication is a problem of misinterpretation. Someone communicates what they think is clear. Someone else executes what they heard. The gap in between gets filled with assumptions.

Over time, that friction compounds. Most teams don’t notice it all at once. They feel it in small ways—projects taking longer than expected, tasks requiring extra follow-up, processes that “just seem harder than they should be.”

One of the ways we address this with our clients is through a technique called user story mapping. Popularized by Jeff Patton in his book, user story mapping is simple in concept, but tends to surface problems most teams didn’t realize were there.

We use it to make sure that the custom software and solutions we build will actually meet the needs of people who depend on them — organizations and clients who use them to do business. But along the way, we’ve also helped teams spotlight their own assumptions as a first step to improving how they work together.

One of the more uncomfortable truths in human communication is that people can genuinely believe they’re aligned while imagining completely different things. We’ve seen this play out many times in discovery sessions. A group of stakeholders will walk through a process and agree that everything makes sense.

But as soon as we start mapping the steps visually, differences show up immediately.

Someone says, “Wait, that happens before this step?” Another adds, “No, we usually do that after.” A third points out, “That’s where things get stuck every time.”

Nothing changed about the process in that moment. What changed is that it became visible.

This is the shift that user story mapping creates. It replaces abstract agreement with concrete statements that people can react to, question, and improve upon.

How story mapping works in practice

When we run story mapping sessions, we’re not starting with specific solutions or technology. We’re starting with a simple goal: understand what’s happening today in your day-to-day operations so that we can know what’s working, what’s not, and where improvements can benefit everyone involved.

We meet with clients and walk through a process step by step, not just with leaders but with the people who do the work. This can include administrative staff, office employees, members of field teams, or technicians on factory floors.

As they describe what happens, we map it out in real time — who does what, in what order, and what happens next. We capture the handoffs, the dependencies, and the exceptions.

That’s where things can get interesting.

In one session, a team described a workflow that involved printing information, handing it off, having a form filled out by hand, and then passing it back for entry into their computer their system. It had been part of their process for years.

When we dug into the process, we discovered that the team member who filled the forms out by hand already had access to the computer system where the data could have been entered directly.

No one had ever challenged it because no one had seen the full picture. And that’s the biggest benefit of user story mapping: it brings everyone to the table to put the puzzle pieces together and build shared understanding.

If you’d like to see more examples of user story mapping and how you can leverage this technique, watch this recorded session with Jeremy Upton, our director of project success, and Valentin Vollmer, our chief operating officer — two experts in this technique who’ve worked closely with leading organizations to understand and improve their processes.

What’s waiting to be discovered in your processes?

Story mapping isn’t the only way to understand a process, but it’s one of the most effective ways we’ve found to bring hidden assumptions into the open and get everyone looking at the same picture.

Sometimes that leads to developing new custom software that exactly fits a team’s most efficient way of working. In other cases it leads to improving how existing tools are used. Sometimes it leads to changes that don’t involve new technology at all.

But it always starts with getting clarity.

If you’re curious what might be hiding in your own processes, we’re happy to explore them with you. You can book a complimentary consultation with us today to discuss your business needs and goals. You won’t get a sales pitch — just a helpful and candid discussion to see if we can help you start finding and fixing the parts of your operations that aren’t delivering value.