Event Storming is a rapid, interactive approach to business process discovery and design that yields high-quality models. Introduced by Alberto Brandolini in 2013, it’s an engaging and effective way to map out complex business processes collaboratively. At the end of the event storm, you should have:

• A shared understanding of the business process, including:

  • Which steps are in scope and which are out of scope.

  • The users involved in the process.

  • An inventory of UI screens and Aggregates for the process.

• A visual representation (physical or digital) of the process that can be refined and expanded over time. For a Customer Success leaders, Event Storming offers a powerful way to align Sales, Onboarding, Product, and Customer Success teams by fostering shared understanding and focusing on outcomes that matter to customers.

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Event Storming is particularly beneficial for cross-functional teams looking to align on customer outcomes. Key benefits include:

• Speed and Engagement: Event Storming is significantly faster and more engaging than traditional process modeling techniques, enabling teams to accomplish more in less time.
• Shared Language: It establishes a common understanding and shared language between Business (e.g., Sales, Customer Success) and IT (e.g., Product, Development).
• Clear Scope and Boundaries: The process helps clarify what’s in scope, what’s out of scope, and where collaboration is needed, aligning teams around shared priorities.
• Customer-Centric Focus: By surfacing questions about the customer journey early in the process, Event Storming ensures all teams are working toward delivering exceptional customer outcomes.
• Iterative Exploration: The technique allows facilitators to incrementally add detail, reducing cognitive overload for participants and enabling refinement over multiple sessions.
• Big-Picture Context: Event Storming places technical implementation details in the broader context of the business process, helping teams understand how their work impacts customer success.
• Alignment with Domain-Driven Design: It’s an effective way to kick-start Domain-Driven Design efforts, ensuring that solutions are both technically robust and aligned with business goals.

1. Map the Business Process from the User’s Perspective: Start with the “happy path,” where the user successfully achieves their goal (e.g., a customer completes onboarding or purchases a product).

2. Identify Required Data: Collaborate with business teams to list the data required for the process to succeed (e.g., customer profile details, product preferences).

3. Bring in IT Teams for Refinement: Once the business process is defined, involve IT teams to identify supporting events, data, and user interfaces.

4. Define Technical Implementation: Work with architects to group common objects and define microservices or other technical components needed to support the process.

Facilitation Materials Needed

• Drawing paper roll. Stickies tend to fall off walls otherwise.

• 2 different colors of wide format sticky notes like the 4x6 sticky notes

• 4 different colors of small square sticky notes like the 3x3 sticky notes

• Permanent Markers for the stickies

• Whiteboard markers if you use whiteboard roll, or charcoal pencils if you use drawing paper. Theses are useful to jot adhoc lines/arrows/annotations