Impact Mapping
Impact mapping is a lightweight visual and collaborative planning technique that helps to focus product delivery on outcomes and promotes the idea of optionality, with many different ways of achieving the same outcomes.
Impact maps are mind maps (visual hierarchies) that connect deliverables to business value using four levels:
- Goal in the centre of the mind map represents the big business value expected from an initiative.
- Actors are on the second level, capturing people that will be impacted by the initiative in order to achieve the goal.
- Impacts are on the third level, capturing the impact on the actors that the initiative is expected to deliver.
- Deliverables are the fourth level, capturing the implementation steps or actions by the product delivery team that can help to achieve individual impacts
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There is also a simpler variant of impact maps, merging the second and third levels. In that case, the actor and the impact (user and the usage goal) are joined together.
By clearly stating value for the delivery organization and the impact for users/customers, this method helps to visualise the assumptions about the Value Exchange Loop and avoid Air Sandwich plans.
Impact maps were developed by Mijo Balic and Ingrid Domingues (Ottersten) in Sweden as part of their Effectstyrning process for IT project management. The method originated as “Goal Cards” in 2002, evolving to “Effect Maps” in 2006. Craig Larman suggested renaming the visual model to “Impact Maps” for a better fit with an English-language audience, and to create a connection with Tom Gilb’s previous work on Impact Estimation Tables. The method achieved wider popularity with Gojko Adzic’s book Impact Mapping in 2012.
- An example of an impact map
- Choosing good goals
- Choosing good impacts
- Choosing and slicing work
- When to use an impact map
- How impact maps differ from GIST?
An example of an impact map
For example, a product that enables event organizers to sell tickets might want to increase market-share by making it easier and more successful for their customers to set up and sell tickets for events.
A good milestone-term goal would be to achieve some specific market position (say #2 if the product is currently #5 in the market).
Good impacts that could help towards that goal would be for large event organizers to plan larger sessions more easily, and to sell more tickets compared to with the current solution. Smaller event organizers might have different problems. Without dedicated staff for ticket marketing, they might appreciate it if they had to spend less time setting up similar events. To help all types of event organizers sell more effectively, the tool could also help event attendees buy tickets faster, reducing the drop-off rate from the payment funnel, and make it easier to purchase for people who do not have credit cards.
There are lots of potential deliverables that can help achieve each of those impacts. For example, integrating three new payment gateways could reduce the issue with purchases when people do not have credit cards. Batch imports, templates and better usability on mobile can help event organizers plan sessions more easily.
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Capturing all that information in a simple hierarchy helps to visualize the plan, and aids with brainstorming. People can discuss alternatives more easily (Is it better to focus on selling more tickets, or planning larger sessions? should we focus on making smaller organizes happier first, or focus on the larger organizer segment?)
Choosing good goals
The goal on an impact map captures the main purpose for the organization or team developing the product or performing the initiative. It captures “the value for us”, a long term business picture, the value consistent with the business model. In the Value Exchange Loop, goals on an impact map represent the captured value. A goal on an impact map is not intended to capture benefits for individual people, but instead to place those types of value into a larger perspective.
Some typical examples of good goals are:
- Reduce operating costs
- Protect an existing revenue stream
- Increase market share
The value captured by a goal should be focused on one milestone of work, and what can be achievable by that. In case of multiple goals, it’s useful to create multiple maps.
When creating multiple maps, it can be very helpful to add expected levels of value (for example, “reduce operating costs between 10-20%” instead of just “reduce operating costs”). This can help compare different outcomes and prioritise them with Christmas Prioritisation.
Choosing good impacts
Impacts capture intermediate value, something that indicates if the team delivering a product is making good progress towards the big goal. Impacts should describe outcomes rather than describing the outputs of the delivery team work. Ideally, impacts should be something that is objective, externally observable and measurable quickly after the work is delivered. In the Value Exchange Loop, impacts on an impact map represent the delivered value.
A good way to capture impacts is to focus on user or customer behaviour changes. If the product delivers value to a user, then the user should be able to do some work faster, more easily or more effectively than before. Such changes should be observable externally, and relatively quickly after the deliverable is released to users.
Choosing and slicing work
Impact maps can be very helpful to get various stakeholders to see different available alternatives and choose one or two to focus on initially. You can then assign some target metrics to impacts to know if you are making good progress (for example, instead of just “buy tickets faster”, restate it as “buy tickets 10-20% faster”). Then try shipping some deliverables from that area, and measure if the expected user group is actually buying tickets faster. Once the target metric is achieved, you can move on to some other part of the map.
The hierarchy of an impact map also supports slicing large blocks of work into smaller pieces that can still effectively drive towards the goal. For example, instead of getting all attendees to buy tickets faster, the group can come up with ideas for deliverables that help a subgroup of attendees get the same value (maybe just in a single territory or for a specific type of event). Alternatively, instead of coming up with deliverables that can reduce the average time to purchase by 10%, the team can propose something simpler that achieves a 1% reduction. Those outcome slices are still valuable to someone, and can prove that product delivery is going in the right direction, while significantly reducing the technical complexity for an initial release.
When to use an impact map
Impact maps can be useful for initial brainstorming and high-level planning before a larger initiative or a product milestone. They can also be useful for periodic reporting to stakeholders, tracking progress towards the outcomes and focusing delivery, effectively stopping work in an area of a map if the impact was achieved, or causing re-planning and re-evaluation if the delivery team is not making enough progress.
Impact maps intentionally do not have a lot of detail around deliverables, so they are not useful for day-to-day work tracking and backlog management. They are most useful for a higher-level view, and can be combined with other techniques such as GIST, user story maps or some other type of hierarchical backlog management.
How impact maps differ from GIST?
Check out How GIST differs from impact maps?
Learn more about the Impact Mapping
- Impact Mapping, ISBN 978-0-9556836-4-0, by Gojko Adzic (2012)
- Effect Managing IT, ISBN 978-8763001762, by Ingrid Ottersten, Mijo Balic (2007)
- Effectstyrning av IT, ISBN 9789147087167, by Ingrid Ottersten, Mijo Balic (2006)
- Impact Mapping Community Web Site
- From Business to Buttons, DS 30: Proceedings of DESIGN 2002, the 7th International Design Conference, Dubrovnik by Balic, M., Berndtsson, J., Ottersten, I., Aldman, M. (2002)
- Getting the most out of impact mapping by Johan Berndtsson, Ingrid Domingues, Gojko Adzic