Discovery journey map

Owned by the Analyst persona (the journey/opportunity-mapping step). Invoked as /discovery-map-journey.

Map a discovery theme's customer journey, or its opportunity landscape, as a diagram so the stages, actions, pains, and opportunities are visible before anyone proposes a solution. The map is exploratory: it surfaces where the experience hurts and where value could be created, and hands those findings to assumption-framing and upsert-user-story. It does not decide the fix.

The anchor model (read before writing)

The diagram lives in a diagramming tool or board (drawio or a mermaid block in the repo). The local Spike work item under docs/discovery/spikes/ is the authoritative anchor: it holds the link to the diagram and a one-line description of what the map shows. If you also write a repo doc, it carries the inbound story: and a relates.design edge pointing at the diagram. See docs/ai-sdlc/artifact-graph.md. Do not create work items here; that is elaboration-upsert-user-story.

Workflow

1. Identify the persona and scenario. Name whose journey this is and the scenario being mapped. A map with no clear actor or scope is not actionable.

2. Lay out the experience. Walk the scenario as stages; under each, capture actions, pains, and opportunities. Keep pains evidence-backed; mark assumptions as such.

3. Produce the diagram. Use mermaid or drawio. Save it to the repo.

4. Optionally write a short discovery doc carrying graph front-matter:

   ---
   story: MN-5              # the Spike key, the anchor
   phase: discovery
   step: map-journey
   relates:
     design: <repo path to the diagram>
   ---
   

5. Confirm before writing. Present the diagram and any doc for confirmation.

Guardrails

• Map before you solve. The output is pains and opportunities, not a chosen solution.
• Anchor on the Spike file, not the board. The link must live on the work item file.
• Evidence over opinion. Pains trace to research; mark unknowns as assumptions.
• No em-dashes, no source line numbers.

Next steps

• /discovery-upsert-hypothesis-canvas (Analyst/PM) - frame the riskiest assumptions the map surfaced.
• /elaboration-upsert-user-story (PM) - when opportunities become stories.
• /governance-enrich-ticket (any) - link the map to the work item file.