The easy way to Story Mapping

It's a useful tool which gets the job done. You sign up, and create a board without even thinking about the functions. It's that easy. Especially after they updated the interface. Keep in mind the tool is more in the freeform category - you can place anything anywhere in a grid - it won't require you to put specific things in specific slots. The drawback of it is that while it is comfortable, it can't fully integrate with task/issue tracking tools.

Pros

While working with paper and stickies is the most quick tool to adopt, sometimes a digital one is required, as it provides certain benefits (quick editing; sharing; remote collaboration). I liked that it required zero learning for the basics. I just did the storymaps without a hitch, no wondering how I can do this or that. Of course, it provides some advanced functionality, but for the pure, basic, stickies-on-the-wall, experience, you there isn't a learning curve. Just plug and do.

Cons

The free version is said to work like the GitHub model - all boards are public. Everyone can see them and browse them. So far so good. However, unlike GitHub where you can use one of several ways to get your repository to other people (sharing a link, inviting them, telling them the name of the repo...) I didn't find any of it here. I could not share the free board to my colleagues (even for viewing). There is a workaround with exporting, which can get the job done. I understand this is their business model, but then the site should not describe it working as GitHub's public repos, as it, in practice, differs as an end result.

Good but with some hiccups

I found the software quite useful for basic storyboarding and brainstorming new projects. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the JIRA integration and the nature of the work I'm doing, it just wasn't useful for anything other than large/complicated projects that need a fair amount of planning and it could only be used in the initial stages. Once I had the list of story "slugs" it was better to manually migrate the list over to JIRA and cease using Cardboard.

Pros

I quite liked the intuitive interface and ease of storyboarding things.

Cons

The JIRA integration left something to be desired. The software did not do a good job of informing me of what it would do when I synced the two. It was also not clear to me that this was not a constant sync. Changes in one product were not automatically migrated over to the other. This was especially problematic because later syncs of the stories and epics caused duplicates of the previously synchronized items to appear because the system did not identify previously sync'd stories.

Good idea, missing features, buggy

- Bad and Good - The central idea of the board is nice - Everything around seems to have been donc in a rush - Management of teams are just a mess - The idea a public boards, not searchable, messy . .. give you just a bad image - Not intuitive (except for the cards management)

Pros

- The idea - The fact that their is not real alternative to the product (not saying it's a good product, just not worst than competition) - Easy to use and simple - The journey feature

Cons

- Buggy - The pricing model - Missing at least a crucial features: descent printing (what do you think teams do with a Story Map) - When you move things cards do not reorganized as expected and we end to have to move many cards across the screen. I should not be forced to think in advance what to enter first to avoid delating and moving things around after.

CardBoard

I stumbled upon CardBoard a long time ago (2011) when I wanted an easy way to capture a Story Map. I really liked how easy it was to drop cards, move them around, and add some comments. The Team really enjoyed the look and feel of it. It did what we wanted and nothing more. I'm not a heavy user of it, but when I do need to put together a Story Map, CardBoard is what I turn to.

Pros

The simplicity of the tool, it provided me with what I wanted and did not over complicate it with features I did not need.

Cons

The export to excel option was pretty messy, but then again why export it? What I wanted was a way to capture the full board visually to put into a document or communication, to show the overall Story Map (which I could not get in screen shots) I realize I could provide a link to the board for people to access and see the actual Map, but sometimes you just want a picture of it to support a communication.

Cardboardit for developing roadmaps and communicating with stakeholders

The tool is great for presenting the roadmap to leadership, stakeholders, and Engineers. I would highly recommend it, however, would also suggest getting enough licences for all folks on your team due to the limited export capabilities.

Pros

The application is intuitive and it's very easy to demonstrate the importance of technical debt to stakeholders.

Cons

The export capability is limited. The description of the cards can not be exported without printing each card individually. The board view PDF export is not as user friendly/aesthetically pleasing as the actual application. Stakeholders are asking for PDF exports, however, I hesitate to share due to the aforementioned reasons.

Functional But Not Robust

It was functional, but it felt like there were too many obstacles in the way to be an efficient replacement for index cards and a camera. I can see it being useful for other teams but not for ours.

Pros

The learning curve was short, so picking up CardBoard and using it was fast. Creating cards and laying them out was easy.

Cons

The cards, as displayed, were much too small. In order to even include all of the information that a User Story requires for one side of the card much of the text was hidden. The back was always hidden. The grid layout was much too rigid, I had hoped for the ability to overlap cards. If these features were present they were not obvious. Laying out cards initially was easy, but the UI resisted efforts to move cards very far (especially using a touch interface). If I needed to move a card to a different part of the board it was almost easier to delete and recreate it than move it.

An Easy to Use Product

Pros

I didn't such software existed until I got to the agile world and someone invited me to CardBoard. My first impression was that it allowed teams to collaborate globally with ease. The cardboards are easily adjustable and organizable to however you want.

Cons

In the beginning I was a bit confused on how the product worked given that I was invited or part of many different boards so it was a tidy difficult to access or find the board I needed to see.

Great Kanban view board

Overall Cardboard is a great tool to use. They could add more flexibility to use and maybe more sticky variants like various shapes . But over all, we love the integrations and ease of use

Pros

We use Cardboard for our Scrum/ Kanban feature view of backlog and it’s very flexible to use. We also use Pivotal tracker. The integration works like a charm !!

Cons

Better look and feel. Dynamic multi person use at a time. Make it a collaberative tool !

Cardboard Roadmaps

Great for presenting road maps for the future for people in all levels of companies.

Pros

I liked that there was a free trial for the product. When it comes to project planning, mapping, solutions, and tracking, it's hard to find a program with ALL the bells and whistles so the free trial is helpful. The product can be deployed on mac, windows, apple, and android which is important due to employees having different devices.

Cons

It didn't include a lot of the features that we needed when it comes to project solutions. Also need to make sure you have enough licensing.

Great Software!!! Super useful just not sure if it's worth the money

I use Cardboard for my UX process. It helps me clarify ideas and create workflows. It helps me solve problems for my users at work and is beneficial because of that

Pros

I liked how it helped me spell out my user story maps and user flows without having to buy a huge whiteboard. It saved me space and time because of these reasons. I like the ease of use and how intuitive the software was.

Cons

The pricing, I wasn't sure I would use it enough to make it worth the cost. If there was a unlimited free version that would give me one or two boards a month that would be nice.

Very nice tool for Story Mapping

I've become interested in product management and read about User Story Mapping technique. Then I googled for a story mapping software and that's how I got to CardBoard. I tried it for a few of my own projects and it worked nice! I was able to create a visual backlog of things I had to do, and track my progress against the backlog. Everything was very transparent and easy to understand, so I highly recommend learning Story Mapping and trying Cardboard to everybody.

Pros

* Very easy to start using it. After you get yourself familiar with the Story Map Concept and sign up for CardBoard, you can start doing the mapping exercise in no-time. * Simple, yet powerful interface. There aren't too many features in the interface (and I'm not saying they are needed), and that makes the UI nice and clean. You won't get lost in tons of unnecessary or rarely used features, everything is at hand and useful.

Cons

The app itself is great, the following points are not criticism, rather ways of further improvement: * Story mapping is not a wide know concept, so some tutorial(s) about story mapping would be great. For example, the competitors storiesonboard offers a "User Story Mapping for beginners" guide. Something like this would be helpful for CardBoard users as well. * UI could benefit from some additions, e.g. to allow to increase the card titles font.

Product Team - Priorities

Overall, this has changed my teams approach of how we work with the business! It is a great interactive tool and our business stakeholders love walking through the roadmap and scope in this collaborative tool!

Pros

The software simply and quickly allows us to build the framework (skeleton/backbone) of the business process and how technology supports through through the power of cards. Through this process we able to quickly understand our knowledge gaps. The journey feature also provides focus during deeper discussions.

Cons

Most of the quirks were address in the latest update (biggest being the introduction of colors and new layouts). However, we still struggle with the printing capabilities and how if needed we need to share in a planning session.

Not quite there yet

Anyone who has read the User Story Mapping book gets why a tool like CardBoard is great for doing/saving story maps. It did install easily and I got started quick enough. In my searching/research, I eventually came across StoriesOnBoard, who also follow the tenets in Patton's book. However, they clearly have the imagination to take it further and built in better tools for managing multiple stories, etc. We ended up choosing SoB, despite the fact that (at the time) they didn't have TFS integration. And while this wasn't a factor in my decision, the CEO himself did a late night (for him, in Europe) walk through demo with me to answer some of my questions.

Pros

I learned about CardBoard from book, User Story Mapping. I so wanted this to be more, but it's a basic implementation of story boarding. It did have TFS integration, which I wanted. I also loved the whole premise of a virtual board for doing story mapping with a remote team.

Cons

I found it to be too basic and not very imaginative in its implementation. Given that we'd want to use it with multiple stories and have one place, I felt it didn't give us the tools to do that.

An elegant, focused piece of software

We use CardBoard for release-slicing and roadmapping, as well as for the overall purpose of user story mapping. It plays well with others and is easy to use. Software that is this well-done is extremely hard to find these days. I highly recommend this software.

Pros

Web-based, so it's everywhere you need it to be.

Cons

I would like a project-based pricing model, rather than a community one. Sometimes what I need is one board for a group of people who will never work together again.

CardBoard Review

OK, because did not found anything else so far providing same experience working with sticky notes, for mixed teams (co-located and not).

Pros

Do story mapping workshops having something similar to sticky notes, if teams are not co-located (which is the best, but not always achievable). Even if local parts are done in analog way, we transform it to cardboard in order to keep the high level overview and be able to tell others the "the story" in order to get them involved.

Cons

Managing large boards is hard, but sure ... not really easy, if you do not have such large physical boards and flipchart papers you can move arround in an room ... Analog workshops do support paint anything to the board/flipchart-paper (arrows, little pictures, "links by arrows this related to that) => not really possible with cardboard (in the same you it happens in such analog workshops)

Easy to use tool

I've built out hundreds of mappings using this tool and never run into an issue.

Pros

I love that this is very simplistic. Story mapping shouldn't be complicated. This software is exactly what you need to map out your next project. It allows for easy collaboration with your team. You can leave notes on tickets. You can easily change the color, had swim lanes, add sections for V1, V2, ect. If you're looking for an easy tool to easily digitize your next story map, this is a great choice.

Cons

There are a couple funny UX things that you'll realize really quickly and figure out how to accomplish that task. Specifically around moving cards and making mass changes.

Cardboardit Works

I've been using it for years. It was probably one of the first electronic story board mapping tools available. It now has a different UI with added bells and whistles. I don't necessarily need them all, but it's nice to see that it's being improved.

Pros

It's great to have a way to keep your sticky notes in an electronic format versus on a wall falling off after a few weeks. We use it to create simple story boards for multiple use cases and can share with distributed teams.

Cons

The copy paste functionality is horrible. Previously, you could copy a series of cards and then paste to quickly create different use cases/jouneys in the same board. It would create a copy directly over your original layouts. You could then move the duplicates where ever you wanted and quickly update. Now, when you paste, it shifts everything down and I have to spend 10 minutes shifting individual cards back up. That's my only main problem with the tool.

Solid for Kanban and story mapping

Pros

The service is pretty intuitive with a mostly point/click and drag/drop interface. It's easy to change colors and otherwise notate special things about the individual items. I also enjoy the ability to "flip" them for additional info while keeping the face "clean."

Cons

It's hard to really get in and kick the tires with the free account... there was initially no option to make your trial boards private, so you either had to be perfectly comfortable with anyone in the world seeing what you're testing, or you had to try to test how well this will work for you using purely hypothetical situations. That's what I did, and I found it was very difficult to decide to pull the trigger for a paid account when I couldn't really use it accurately during the test drive. Seems that they have since allowed you to "upgrade" to a 30-day trial account before paying.

The best tool for online story mapping

I used CarboardIT to map out the product a team was developing for a Hackathon. We had lots of ideas that needed to be agressive lying prioritized and then recorded for possible future development. The tool allowed remote members to get a view of what the team was up to and could have collaborated in real time if we needed.

Pros

CardboardIT is extremely easy to set up and get going with. I had my first board running and doing real work with in minutes. There were many examples of other boards to get ideas from but this is so easy to use you really don't need much. I also loved the free trial. It is fully functional but requires that your board remain publicly visible. That was perfect for the 1 week hackathon project we used it for. If I were to continue then I would definitely pay the small fee to keep the board going.

Cons

There's not much not to like. It's straight forward and easy so I never had to call tech support or even consult the help file. I suppose an integration with other tools like Jira might require a bit more thought but there's no need if you're using it as a stand alone product.

Great story mapping tool

Electronic tools for story mapping are really hard to come by. Fortunately we have found CardBoard.

Pros

The best thing about Cardboard is that it offers other modes of use, e.g. integrating to JIRA or printing cards for real world manipulation.

Cons

Sharing (allowing Viewers) for a large community is constrained by either configuration (public vs private) or administration (long list of emails.)

simple and fast

I've used this to do live training on storymaps and it's flawless. In a world of bloated tools, this is a gem!

Pros

It's simple and fast. Very easy to create story maps, journeys, and it's easy to slice the map into different chunks.

Cons

I suppose if I had to nitpick, a 'collapse' option for 'epics' would be handy, especially when you get into huge storymaps...although that would take away the free-flowing nature of the interface.

Been a keen exponent of cardboard

I’ve used it map out a the biggest project my old employer ever had. Also smaller components to describe it to customers, build with customers. I did a talk on User Story Mapping at an agile meet up & demo’d Cardboard to the group and it was really well received. Introduced my current P.O. to it after he did a map in Excel - he’ll never go back, loves it but still trying to get approval for it.

Pros

Ease of use - the way that the cards just rearrange themselves. Being able to group quickly. The blue line. Downloading in csv.

Cons

‘Selling’ to various bosses at different work places. They just don’t seem to get it, even tho it’s really cheap & wont make a difference to the budget. Maybe that’s just an issue with me & the places I’ve worked.

Cardboard

Pros

Cardboard is easy and simple to use. Doesn't take much to get up and running. Nice for sharing story maps with remote users. Great for small story maps.

Cons

A little too simple. It becomes hard to manage with bigger maps.

Great for planning, JIRA integration needs work

Pros

The simplicity of the boards are fantastic and have caused several others in my company to adopt the product as well. It is great for visualizing plans to stakeholders, and for them to see the breakdown of the features and when development will happen

Cons

The JIRA integration needs work. We use JIRA extensively, with multiple boards for various work streams. The integrator on the Cardboard side does not allow for customization over what is being pulled, and therefore cannot filter out technical tasks when I only want the user stories coming through. This needs to be fixed for it to get 5 stars.

Best I've found so far

Pros

It's open ended with what I can do. I like being able to move the cards anywhere I want, the user journey functionality is a great idea, and it creates a good visual.

Cons

The number one issue is the navigation and use of the software. Moving cards around quickly and moving around the board (especially when sharing my screen) needs a lot of work. If it the use of this software improved, it would be my main story board. I still use a physical board for working sessions because of this.

Cardboard is a great tool

I have found using the tool has been unrivaled when doing things like card mapping. I have also found it useful to use during retrospectives.

Pros

I enjoy how easy it is to use. The dev team has integrated great features over the years.

Cons

While a lot of the features are great. There are times I wish it just remained a simple light weight tool.

Like digital post-its

Pros

- Allows you to keep your story map and edit it ongoing, unlike having it on the wall where it often has to come down and all you have left is a photo - Great for distributed teams

Cons

- The lmitations are only those of doing anything on a screen, you can't step back and see the bigger picture

CardBoard Review

I tested a few story mapping tools and CardBoard came out on top in my tests. Just need to get budget approval now and I'll be able to start using it.

Pros

I really like the UI and the ease with which cards can be created and moved around - two of the most important things in story mapping. I wasn't able to convince my Jira admin to set up the integration but from the videos I saw it looks to do exactly what I'm looking for.

Cons

I didn't like trying to rearrange all of the cards when one card in a column pushed out a bunch of others. There was a lot of multi-select drag and dropping of all other cards to fill the extra column rather than it disappearing once empty.

CardBoard Review

Pros

The software tools look modern and easy to use. I was able to get accustomed to the application with great ease.

Cons

I think the application needs to have slightly more versatile for it to be used for a wider variety of reasons.

Numerous features make CardBoard a viable tool for User Story Mapping

We used CardBoard for traditional Story Mapping exercises when building an initial product backlog as part of user story workshops. The need for this tool diminished as teams fell into a more regular backlog refinement meeting cadence. For initially decomposing epics/features into user stories this was a decent virtual tool for remote team participants. For co-located teams we find more tactical physical story mapping with sticky notes to be far more engaging.

Pros

Numerous features to support multiple 'thinking-styles' when capturing the user story journey (colors, annotations, grid design, etc.). The integration with VersionOne was a key element for us when using any digital story mapping tool.

Cons

Encountered a few bugs or hiccups when collaborating with remote participants.

New version is greatly improved over previous version

Pros

Love that you can now copy/paste within each story. Like that you can enter more information in the Description about the story and record Discussions.

Cons

Navigating is still cumbersome at times when you have a lot of stories

user journey map layout

I like this tool, it's good starting point but there is multiple such tools​ available in the market which aligns with modern product development process.

Pros

I like how you can do flexible user journey map using stickies. The multiple colours stickies are good for segregating​ the ideas and synthesise as and when required.

Cons

Lack of templates is something that bugs me at times. With a tool like cardboardit people could cod what not and use it for what not . I think it's capable of much more. I would have loved it more if it had the capacity to save few things as preset and use it in future. Also,​ real-time​ collaboration is a missing piece as well.

Good tool for story mapping

Experience was good. Wanted an online tool for story mapping. Ended up using Visio for now, but might use the tool in future.

Pros

Ease of use. There are not many tool that allow you to create story maps easily. Integration with Jira.

Cons

Can’t support/create complex story maps easily. Need the ability to resize cards. I’d be really nice if there was an ability to add markers on the card to denote additional info (add a round tag to the card and color it). Also, ability to format text on the card and a few words preview of description would be great.

Love it

I love it.

Pros

This is very easy to use. I enjoy the interface but there are some small hurdles getting set up. Nothing that would slow you down.

Cons

The initial setup of the board is a little tough. It would be nice if there were more templates which showed different ways to use the software after picking a theme or something.

Best online story mapping tool

Support is always on the ball, and readily available to help. The app is great for what it’s designed for.

Pros

Nothing comes close to this in terms of the flexibility and usefulness in helping virtual teams to story map.

Cons

The export to csv and import sometimes can be glitchy. Have to try several times with big maps to export or import

Review from Dhaya (LendKey)

It's been great so far! Love all the recent changes that were made too.

Pros

Ease of use! It's very easy to create digital story maps. We use story maps for all our projects.

Cons

- There's no ability to create folders. Since we create many story boards across the organization, there's no way to organize.

Awesome, Focused solution, but pricey

It was a great trial experience, and I loved playing with the tool. Just wish it wasn't so expensive. Specifically, I only need a couple of permanent licenses, but when I run workshops, I need between 5 and 50 people to be able to edit all at once, but only for a few hours. Sometimes, I need temporary licenses for temporary team members who'll only need to edit for a few days or weeks. Nobody has really cracked this pricing structure yet.

Pros

I loved how well it accomplished its core feature set. It was as close to the perfect solution to the kind of tool I was looking for for the specific tasks I was doing at the time.

Cons

Unfortunately the price-point made it competitive with products like Mural and RealTime Board, both of which have a VAST array of features that CardBoard does not. If CardBoard offered feature-based pricing it'd win a lot of the time, but it simply can't compete with those other tools. So, if you're going to spend that much money, may as well get all those other features should you need them for other projects in the future.

Makes Collaboration Easy

Great way to organize project/product requirements quickly. Love that it allows multiple people working simultaneously. That's real collaboration!

Pros

It was quick and easy to pull a small group together to teach them story mapping through an exercise. Everyone was able to contribute right away. A few even loved CardBoard so much they kept building on the exercise, and demonstrating the product to colleagues.

Cons

Would like to draw release lines that are snug to the user story cards by allowing the lines to turn vertically while going horizontally to indicate releases. Also, would like a way to keep top row in view when scrolling lower.

Great Agile Planning Tool

My team was able to visualize features broken down to stories in a PI (product increment), offering committed value to business, and giving the team a good idea of how our development work would be spread out over the course of eight weeks.

Pros

It was easy to start a board, create additional items in a flow, move them around, and the ability to add a point value to a square (story to my team) was fantastic!

Cons

Sometimes when moving items, not everything was captured and had to re-move stories.

Great for designing

We were looking at creating a new applications and used CardBoard to develop and organize our ideas.

Pros

It is very easy to use, the interface is great.

Cons

Don't have any complaints. Perhaps having more colours to chose for the stickies.

Story map layout !

Cardboardit was my favourite online post it notes but then I found Mural :) . It gave me much more than cardboardit. But that said , cardboardit was there when Mural wasn’t and pioneered the way !

Pros

The one thing I really love is the fact that I could map out anything I want ! Any flow and which way. The multiple colours definitely help In segregating . I’ve used it as a Kanban board , for story mapping and even for roadmapping to an extent . Multi talented

Cons

Lack of templates is something that bugs me at times. With a tool like cardboardit people could cod what not and use it for what not . I think it’s capable of much more.

Easy tool to implement storymaps within an org

We are trying to make a storymap interactive within the organization and it's been an effective tool where people feel involved with the decisions.

Pros

It is stupid simple. So easy to share with others, make changes, and easily add notes for a card that should be investigated.

Cons

As storymaps get larger, navigation does get a bit tricky moving horizontally using the trackpad without triggering Back in the browser.

Easy to use and powerful

Pros

I liked how easy the product was to use. Keyboard shortcuts made it a breeze to transfer my board to digital.

Cons

I wanted to integrate with Microsoft products, specifically VSTS.

CardBoard is a great story board software

Pros

We use CardBoard to story map some of the apps we create for our medical devices. This software allows us to closely collaborate with partners across the country with no issues!

Cons

I really do not have much negative to say about this product. The ease of use can be an issue but that likely comes form people being new to story boarding.

Trial evaluation

I used a CardBoard trial for capturing retrospective content in a visual way. I tripped over manipulating the content onscreen and the Excel export brought over content that I didn't need (maybe that can be tailored--not sure). Overall, I couldn't justify the subscription fee when I can use something like Trello for free.

Pros

Easy to get started, pleasant color palette

Cons

Could have been user error but I experienced an issue with spacing. I couldn't easily manipulate full columns of tiles and experienced added space between columns that I didn't know how it happened or how to remove the space quickly.

A great product if it's the only thing you were using.

I was attempting to bootstrap some existing teams so that they could start doing more end to end thinking about their products as we were designing and building them.

Pros

I liked that it was very easy to use. Almost everything was very click and drag, which made it really easy to onboard new users who were new to story mapping. I also really appreciated that it let me share a story map across multiple locations. I work with teams in SF and Seattle. A physical board is a nice idea but just not possible with the way that we are distributed.

Cons

I had some challenges with user management. I work in a large enterprise so adding users individually was a bit of a pain and it was challenge to move users from regular viewer to user or admin roles on multiple boards. I also found that bulk moves of cards was difficult. If I wanted to pick up several cards and put them between two existing rows that wasn't really possible without spending 8 or 10 minutes rearranging the other cards around it to keep the map coherent. Also our org runs on-prem JIRA and I had no way to connect JIRA and confluence together, which made it nearly impossible to keep the two in sync. This is ultimately why I stopped using the product.

A great little tool

We were able to plan our projects very easily, without the tool getting in the way.

Pros

Easy to understand, even of you don't understand user story mapping

Cons

Needs more features, such as better TFS integration.

Cardboard use at ADP

Great experience. Some improvement needed. Also, it would be great if it can offer integration with Rally and other product management tools.

Pros

Gives product managers a great tool to create and manage product maps quickly and seemlessly.

Cons

Creating a new map or a thread is a bit cumbersome, especially when swimlanes and columns have to be inserted or removed.

Great little app!

I used it to communicate a mission/story map of a partner integration. Outlined the high level steps at the top and then the detailed activities below. I used different color cards to represent different groups. I helped me get my point across!

Pros

Free trial. easy to use and move cards around. Give you the same "feel" of using post-it notes. Export to PDF option is great!

Cons

Free trial was only 30 days. Graphics aren't wild and crazy but serve the purpose.

My Opinion

Overall this is a solid product. There's minor things that need improvement in terms of performance but for the price it definitely gets the job done.

Pros

I like the style and layout of this software. It is similar to how I organize my ideas in my head, on paper and just in general. So for that, it is very easy to understand the workflow and organization of the program.

Cons

There's definitely a small learning curve to really get the most out of the product. Which is sort of inevitable I suppose. I think some of the "bulk actions" and clicking & dragging functions could use some improvement.