Impact Mapping: Making a big impact with software products and projects

Impact mapping helps to reduce waste by preventing scope creep and over-engineered solutions. It provides focus for delivery by putting deliverables in the context of impacts they are supposed to achieve. It enhances collaboration by creating a shared big-picture view for technical and business people.

impact maps lay out what we will build and how these are connected to ways we will assist the people who will use the solution.

An impact map communicates scope, goals and priorities, but also assumptions on two levels. The first is that a deliverable will cause a change in behaviour of an actor, produce an impact. The second is that once the impact is achieved, the relevant actor will contribute to the overall objectives. This visualisation makes impact maps a powerful too

The visual nature of this method also facilitates effective meetings and supports big-picture thinking, which provides organisational alignment.

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

What your map is really assisting with is visualizing first provable and later validated assumptions (roads).

By mapping out different actors, we can prioritise work better – for example focusing on satisfying the most important actors first.

The role of testing becomes to prove that deliverables support desired actor behaviours, instead of comparing software features to technical expectations. If a deliverable does not support an impact, even if it works correctly from a technical perspective, it is a failure and should be treated as a problem, enhanced or removed.

An impact map is also a storyboard of our conceptual understanding of how to address a goal or target.

second level of an impact map sets the actors in the perspective of our business goal. It answers the following questions: How should our actors' behaviour change? How can they help us to achieve the goal? How can they obstruct or prevent us from succeeding? These are the impacts that we're trying to create.