Why do hospital emergency rooms have a triage process? Because they need to decide who needs attention as a priority and when. If you want to make the most efficient use of your limited resources then you should do the same.

A solid triage process is the engine for feeding learning back into your plan.

Adding a story to triage

New stories are added to triage as a result of being discovered as you build new software. They may be the result of adding points to Out of Scope during a story kickoff for example.

• add a …so that - this will help decide when you need to do something and why
• add a basic description - others should be able to understand what a story means

Triaging

You can run a triage process regularly (like after the morning standup). Clearing things out regularly allows you to adapt quickly to changes and new information.

Add additional details

• add a t-shirt size - this will help you decide the cost of doing something, anything Large and above can be tackled with a spike first to reduce the risk
• add the epic - decide where this story lives

Decide when to do it

• move it to Doing and do it right now - only if it’s urgent - some people use an expedite lane for this
• move it to To Do - if it’s related to the current focus for the next 5
• move it to Planned and add to the current milestone - if it’s required to reach the next goal
• move it to Planned and add to a later milestone - if it’s required for a later goal
• move it to Later - if you don’t want to lose it but it’s not part of the current plan
• delete it - if you don’t need it, preferable to Later if you want to reduce waste in your story map