Impact Mapping - a cheatsheet

Impact maps facilitate this process, taking it even further. Instead of just connecting features to goals at the start of a product milestone or a project, impact maps allow us to maintain a dynamic roadmap that changes with our learning, keeping the goal in mind and making features and scope secondary to it. We visualise assumptions, which allows

Impact mapping helps to create better plans and roadmaps that ensure alignment of business and delivery, and are easily adaptable to change.

Instead of writing hundreds of low-level stories, impact maps allow us to capture stakeholder needs as actor behaviour impacts.

Impact mapping is a strategic planning technique. It prevents organisations from getting lost while building products and delivering projects, by clearly communicating assumptions, helping teams align their activities with overall business objectives and make better roadmap decisions.

The role of impact maps

Impact mapping is a great way to engage senior business and technical experts at the start of work on a product module or project milestone to create a shared understanding of scope – not from a technical but from a business perspective.