From Sticky Notes to Intelligent Agents
EventStorming as the Launchpad for an Agentic Roadmap That Ships Value
A wall of sticky notes can do what no AI keynote can: pinpoint exactly where autonomous agents will pay off.
Turning AI buzz into a tangible, workable backlog isn’t easy, but the right systems can make it much easier. While simple on the surface, EventStorming provides the right framework for teams to build alignment and create a plan, because when every team member sees the same workflow end‑to‑end, the places where agentic experience can have an outsized impact become obvious.
Ambitious brands already feel the urgency. According to ARK Invest, AI agents could mediate nearly $9 trillion in e-commerce transactions by 2030. But for many organizations, the question isn’t whether or not to act, it’s where to start. That’s where EventStorming comes in, compressing months of misalignment into a single cross-functional sprint. It doesn’t just spark ideas; it builds the pilot backlog and KPI framework that agent initiatives can ship against.
EventStorming is a fast-paced, collaborative workshop method that maps a business process as a sequence of domain events, bringing every stakeholder into the same visual conversation. It unlocks organizational memory and exposes the real-world friction points where intelligent agents can make a meaningful impact.
Let’s explore how to use EventStorming to move from shared understanding to shipped outcomes, with agentic systems designed to solve real pain points, not just check an innovation box.
Why EventStorming for Agentic Systems?
At its core, EventStorming is a kind of organizational anthropology. It was designed to quickly surface process knowledge by bringing business, tech, and operational stakeholders together around a shared timeline of what actually happens. It reveals the informal workarounds, communication delays, and manual bottlenecks that never make it into documentation but drive day-to-day operations.
That context is exactly what agent initiatives need.
When participants map out domain events, then layer in pain points, they naturally reveal the friction: delays, manual steps, and miscommunications. These are your best candidates for agent intervention— clear problems that teams already feel, flagged in real time by the people who live them. Best of all, because marketing, commerce ops, and architects are all in the room, buy-in happens as the insights emerge.
How to Run an Agent-focused EventStorming Workshop
Start by inviting 8–12 people who collectively own a specific journey, whether it’s content publishing, merchandising, or fulfillment. Include content leads, product managers, developers, operations specialists, and a neutral facilitator. Use four colors of sticky notes: orange for events, purple for problems, blue for systems, and green for agent opportunities.You can do this in-person with physical sticky notes or using a collaboration tool like Miro that even has pre-built EventStorming templates.
Set a tight scope. Map something like “everything from idea to in-market content” or “from cart to doorstep.” Keep it focused—depth beats breadth. This is where we see teams get stuck: if a tight scope is not set, you end up needing multiple sessions, team member engagement drops, and what could have been a high-value, productive session, becomes drawn out and unproductive.
Then move through the workshop in three focused passes:
Pass 1: Raw Events
Participants use orange sticky notes to write down every action within scope. Focus on volume over precision. The goal here is to surface everything, fast.
Pass 2: Structure and Systems
Group the events into a sequence. Add blue notes to highlight supporting systems, commands, and policies. This is where gaps in your current process start to appear, but don’t lock into a concept yet.
Pass 3: Pain Points and Agent Opportunities
Now, identify the friction. Purple notes mark delays, breakdowns, and manual steps. For each cluster, ask: could an agent observe, decide, or act here? Use green notes to flag those possibilities.
Because modern agentic systems can now reason, act, and adapt across tools using plain language instructions, even non-technical participants can imagine the hand-offs without diving into code. The result is a shared mental model—and a shortlist of agent-ready problems to solve.
From Wall to Backlog to Pilot
By the end of the workshop, the wall (or digital board!) will tell a story. You’ll see clusters of purple notes—those are your first backlog items.
Synthesize these clusters into a spreadsheet or digital board. For each, document:
- Proposed agent role (e.g., auto-replenishment coordinator)
- Success metric (e.g., 40% reduction in manual reordering)
- Governance checkpoint (e.g., human approval on high-value SKUs)
Choose one pilot to start. Prioritize a high-friction, low-risk use case and frame it with a SMART goal. The tighter the scope, the faster the feedback loop.
Architecture on a Page
Now translate sticky note clusters into systems thinking:
- What tools generate or consume the data?
- Where does memory or context need to persist?
- Which APIs or services will the agent use?
- What role-based access is required?
- How will humans and agents collaborate?
Even a rough service diagram—shaped by what you learned in the workshop—can unlock faster build cycles than weeks of isolated architecture planning. The goal is clarity, not perfection.
Pilot, Measure, Iterate (with Governance in the Loop)
Start small. Deploy the agent with a limited team and define a success metric that can be tracked on a dashboard. Combine that quantitative signal with qualitative feedback: Do users trust the agent’s decisions? Where does it break down?
From the outset, establish lightweight guardrails: things like permissions, fallback logic, and defined moments for human oversight. The goal isn’t control, it’s context. Human involvement early on builds trust and keeps systems grounded in real-world nuance.
Review your agent’s performance regularly. Every four weeks, revisit the data, update prompts, refine guardrails, and assess readiness to expand. Tools like LangSmith can help track agent behavior and support human- or LLM-based evaluation of outcomes.
Common pitfalls to avoid: overreaching (don’t try to automate everything at once), failing to assign ownership (every agent needs a champion), and pushing governance too late in the process (bring risk and compliance stakeholders in early).
Your Agentic Roadmap (At the Pace That Works for You)
You don’t have to follow a fixed calendar to get started with agentic systems. What matters is momentum along a focused path, from alignment to execution. This framework lets you move fast without rushing:
Step 1: Align.
Schedule the workshop. Gather diverse voices from across departments. The more perspectives, the richer the insights.
Step 2: Prioritize.
Run the session. Identify friction points. Create a real-world backlog, then choose one high-impact use case for your pilot.
Step 3: Design.
Define your agent’s role and how you’ll measure success. Set KPIs and guardrails. Involve your dev team early.
Step 4: Build.
Move fast, but build smart. Ship a lightweight version of your agent with observability in place from day one.
Step 5: Iterate.
Review pilot results. Tune and refine. Decide what to scale, what to shelve, and how to move forward with confidence.
Sticky notes don’t just tell stories. They make strategy tangible. When a room full of stakeholders co-creates a map of how things actually work, the case for intelligent agents isn’t theoretical, it’s obvious.
EventStorming turns that shared understanding into shared momentum. And when that momentum carries into a pilot with measurable outcomes, you’ve already won half the battle. You’re no longer exploring agentic systems, you’re delivering them. Which means the next time someone asks for your agentic strategy, you won’t show a slide. You’ll show what’s running in production.
Jen Wright
Senior Director of Strategic Delivery, Orium
Jennifer Wright is the Senior Director of Strategic Delivery at Orium. She’s focused on building high-performing, cross-functional teams that help clients move faster, make smarter decisions, and deliver composable solutions with lasting impact. Currently, she’s leading the reinvention of Orium’s delivery methods with AI at the core—setting a new standard that inspires clients to evolve alongside us.