Impact Mapping And Why It Matters In Business

Impact mapping is a product development technique based on user design, mind mapping, and outcome-driven planning. Impact mapping is an agile technique intended to help teams connect individual product features that can impact the user behaviors while connecting to the key, guiding metrics for the business.

Component	Description
Concept Name	Impact Mapping
Origin	Impact Mapping was introduced by Gojko Adzic in his book “Impact Mapping” (2012).
Overview	Impact Mapping is a strategic planning technique that helps organizations align their activities with business goals. It visualizes the impact that various projects or initiatives can have on achieving specific business objectives. Impact Mapping is a collaborative tool that fosters communication and shared understanding among stakeholders.
Key Elements	– Business Objectives: The high-level goals or outcomes that an organization aims to achieve.
	– Stakeholders: Individuals or groups who have an interest or role in the success of the project or initiative.
	– Deliverables: Tangible results or outputs that contribute to achieving business objectives.
	– Impacts: The desired changes in behavior or conditions that result from delivering the deliverables.
How It Works	1. Define Business Objectives: Clearly articulate the specific business objectives that need to be achieved.
	2. Identify Stakeholders: Identify and involve all relevant stakeholders, including users, customers, and team members.
	3. Create a Visual Map: Develop an Impact Map that visually connects business objectives, deliverables, and impacts.
	4. Link Deliverables to Impacts: For each business objective, link the deliverables and the desired impacts.
	5. Focus on Deliverables: Concentrate on creating the deliverables that contribute most effectively to the desired impacts.
	6. Iterate and Adapt: Impact Maps are dynamic and should be updated as the project progresses or as goals evolve.
Applications	– Strategic Planning: Used to align projects and initiatives with organizational objectives.
	– Product Development: Helps product teams focus on features that provide the most value to users and the business.
	– Project Management: Ensures that projects deliver outcomes that matter.
Benefits	– Alignment: Ensures that activities are closely aligned with business goals.
	– Clarity: Provides a clear and shared understanding of project objectives.
	– Stakeholder Engagement: Involves stakeholders in the planning process.
Drawbacks	– Complexity: Creating and maintaining Impact Maps can be time-consuming.
	– Assumptions: Relies on accurate assumptions about deliverables and their impacts.
Key Takeaway	Impact Mapping is a collaborative and visual planning technique that links business objectives, deliverables, and impacts. It helps organizations focus on projects and initiatives that have the most significant positive effect on their business goals. Impact Maps are dynamic and should evolve as the project progresses or objectives change.

Table of Contents

Understanding Impact Mapping

Many product teams understand the importance of outcomes but nevertheless succumb to prioritising the development of much more tangible features.

Impact mapping was designed to help these teams gain clarity on outcomes that are comparatively hard to measure or appreciate. It is a collaborative methodology that seeks to help agile teams connect individual features to behaviours worth changing – all the while satisfying metrics that matter to the business.

Impact mapping combines elements of mind mapping and strategic planning and is prevalent among start-ups and large enterprises alike. Over the years, it has been adapted for use in:

Facilitating innovation workshops.
Aligning stakeholders with legacy enterprise projects.
Software delivery process improvement.
Instituting organizational-wide improvement.
Testing strategy definition.

The four key questions of Impact Mapping

Four key questions in the form of levels help stimulate conversation during product development. This conversation forms the basis of a visual and structured mind-map.

The fifth and final level is not based on a question but instead on validating the solutions arrived it in the first four levels.

Let’s take a look at each below.

Level 1 – Why are we doing this?

In other words, what goal is the project trying to achieve in the form of an objective? Why is this goal worth pursuing? The “why” can be made more tangible by articulating ambition. What is the timing of the goal and what difference does it seek to create?

For example, a business may have an ambition to increase average Net Promoter Score from 7 to 8 in the next 12 months.

Level 2 – Who can bring the organization closer to an objective? Alternatively, who might prevent the organization from achieving that objective?

Who are the actors who have the potential to impact the outcome? Identifying the most obvious actors is easy, but the real value lies in uncovering “second-degree” actors. In addition to external actors such as customers, consider internal actors such as key stakeholders, marketing, customer service, and administrative support roles.

Level 3 – How should the behaviour of actors change?

Put differently, how does behaviour have to change to change the overall impact? This is the part that many organizations struggle with. Indeed, actors will not voluntarily change their behaviour so that the business can become more profitable.

Insight into behavioural outcomes needs to be earnt through rigorous qualitative and quantitative research. The pains and gains of the current actor workflow must be well understood to selectively identify behaviours worth changing. Does the outcome need to be higher, lower, faster, or slower?

Outcomes should always be reframed as a challenge. If an actor wants to purchase event tickets without calling a call centre, the team can reframe it as: “How might we enable event participants to purchase tickets from their smartphone?”

Reframing also helps product teams avoid reverting to discussing specific features out of habit.

Level 4 – What can the product team do to support the desired impacts?

Now is the time to consider the features (deliverables) that will support an outcome. This can be achieved by running cross-functional ideation sessions involving stakeholders from across the company.

Note that the inclusion of a feature on the map does not stipulate that it must be executed. The primary goal here is to create a list of potential courses of action.

For the previous example of an event goer ordering tickets without calling a call centre, the actor is most likely to be a smartphone app that sells tickets. Here, the outcome that alters customer behaviour is a more convenient means of ordering tickets. Ultimately, a successful outcome signifies that the business has reached its objectives and made an impact.

Level 5 – Determining whether the solution is worth implementing

Solutions must be validated through qualitative and quantitative experiments. Importantly, multiple experiments should consider every aspect of the solution, from feasibility to validity to usability.

Then, worthwhile solutions can be prioritized using a framework such as the ICE Scoring Model.

Drawbacks of Impact Mapping

Potential for Oversimplification:

Reductionist Approach: Impact Mapping can sometimes oversimplify complex business goals, user needs, and the paths to achieve them, potentially overlooking nuanced details.
Risk of Misinterpreting Goals and Needs: The high-level view provided by Impact Mapping may lead to a misinterpretation of deeper, underlying goals and user needs.

Dependency on Accurate Initial Assumptions:

Relies Heavily on Initial Assumptions: The effectiveness of Impact Mapping is contingent on the accuracy of the initial goals and assumptions, which can be flawed or too broad.
Challenges with Dynamic Environments: In rapidly changing environments, initial assumptions may quickly become outdated, rendering the impact map less effective.

Resource and Time Intensive:

Requires Significant Time and Collaboration: Creating an effective impact map demands substantial time and effort, involving collaboration among various stakeholders.
Potential for Extensive Debates and Discussions: The process of aligning on goals, actors, impacts, and deliverables can lead to lengthy discussions, which may delay the project initiation.

Limited Scope and Focus:

Focuses Mainly on Planning Stages: Impact Mapping is primarily a planning tool and does not provide detailed guidance on execution or iterative development.
May Not Cover All Aspects of Product Development: Certain aspects like technical feasibility, resource allocation, and detailed design elements are not typically addressed in Impact Mapping.

When to Use Impact Mapping

Suitable Scenarios:

Early Stages of Product Development: Particularly useful in the initial planning phase of product or software development to align goals and expected outcomes.
Strategic Planning and Goal Alignment: Helpful for aligning various stakeholders on strategic goals and the means to achieve them.

Strategic Application:

Product Roadmapping: Can be effectively used for roadmapping, helping to prioritize features and activities based on their potential impact on goals.
Aligning Teams on Objectives: Useful for ensuring that all team members understand and work towards common objectives.

How to Use Impact Mapping

Implementing the Method:

Define the Goal: Clearly articulate the primary goal or problem to be addressed.
Identify Actors: Determine who can influence or is affected by the goal (e.g., users, internal stakeholders).
Map Out Impacts: Identify how these actors can help or hinder the achievement of the goal.
List Deliverables: Determine what can be created or changed to influence the actors and achieve the impacts.

Best Practices:

Involve a Diverse Group of Stakeholders: Include a range of perspectives to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the goal and potential impacts.
Keep the Map Agile: Be prepared to update and adapt the impact map as new information becomes available or circumstances change.
Focus on Measurable Impacts: Wherever possible

, identify impacts that are measurable, so progress towards goals can be concretely assessed.

Iterative Review: Regularly review and revise the impact map throughout the project lifecycle to ensure it remains relevant and aligned with project goals.

What to Expect from Implementing Impact Mapping

Enhanced Goal Alignment and Clarity:

Improved Understanding of Goals: Provides a clear visualization of the relationship between goals, stakeholders, desired impacts, and potential deliverables.
Alignment Across Teams: Helps align different teams and stakeholders around common objectives and understanding how their work contributes to these goals.

Strategic Planning Benefits:

Focused Efforts: Aids in focusing efforts on activities that are most likely to impact the desired outcomes, reducing waste on less effective initiatives.
Informed Decision-Making: Facilitates informed decision-making in prioritizing features or actions based on their potential impact.

Potential Challenges:

Initial Resistance to Adoption: There may be resistance or skepticism, particularly if stakeholders are accustomed to traditional planning methods.
Balancing Detail and High-Level Overview: Striking the right balance between providing sufficient detail and maintaining a high-level overview can be challenging.

Overall, Impact Mapping is a strategic planning tool that offers a visual and structured way to align project goals with actions. While it provides clarity and focus, its effectiveness relies on accurate assumptions, regular updates, and the involvement of diverse stakeholders. Balancing its high-level approach with detailed considerations of feasibility and execution is key to its successful application.

Impact mapping example

In this final section, we will outline some general examples of impact mapping with respect to a variety of common business goals.

Goal – Increase user retention by 25%

Consider a company with a goal to increase user retention in its workplace management platform.

How can it minimize churn? On a theoretical map, the company will list the following actors, impact, and deliverables:

Active users (actor) → increase monthly active users (MAU) and daily active users (DAU) (impact) → gamification, in-app messages (deliverables).
Future users (actor) → increase onboarding completion rate (impact) → one click sign-up process on social media, sign-up progress bar (deliverables).
Customer support (actor) → enhance user assistance (impact) → live-chat functionality (deliverable).

Goal – Improve user experience

In the second example, a company such as Duolingo that operates a language learning platform wants to improve the product experience for its users.

The impact map for this business may look something like this:

Teachers (actor) → improve quality of online classes (impact) → spatial audio, HD video, software integration (deliverables).
Engineering team (actor) → increase frequency of feature releases (impact) → continuous delivery investment, process automation (deliverables).
Students (actor) → teacher review system (impact)  five-star rating feature (deliverable).

Goal – Increase number of active players to 1 million

In the third example, we have an online gaming platform that wants to increase the number of active players to the 1 million mark:

Players (actor) → word-of-mouth recommendation to friends and family, posting about the game on social media, live streaming (impacts) → personalization, viral content, more compelling gameplay, referral incentivization (deliverables).
Advertisers (actor) → bulk invitations, banner advertising (impacts)
Internal (actor) → engage industry network, create public relations event and send invites (impacts).

Goal – Increase school environment to 450 students

Impact mapping can also be used in the education sector.

In this example, a small school has received grant money from the government to build a new classroom wing. To be profitable, the school needs to attract additional students up to a total of 450.

Marketing and enrolment coordinator (actor) → advertise, devote more time to recruitment, contract outreach candidates (impacts) → social media posts, email marketing, automate aspects of enrolment process (deliverables).
Current parents (actor) → recommend the school to friends and family, identify potential outreach candidates, generate awareness in local neighborhood (impacts) → provide shareable information, bumper stickers, testimonials, and suitable candidates (deliverables).
Faculty (actor) → word-of-mouth recommendation to friends, family, other teachers, publicize student and school achievements, improve student test scores and outcomes (impacts)  shareable information, social media campaigns, tailored lesson plans, software and other technology integration (deliverables).

Goal – Increase revenue to $2 million by the end of the year

Sticking with the education theme, our last example is an online learning platform that wants to increase revenue to $2 million:

Prospective students (actor) → purchase a course (impact) → free course preview, limited time discount (deliverables).
Current students (actor) → purchase additional courses, recommend courses to friends (impacts) → coupons, gamification, weekly emails, shareable information for social media, certificates/awards for course completion (deliverables).
Instructors (actor) → develop new/topical courses (impact) → provide instructional documentation, streamline creation process with technology (deliverables).
Internal engineering team (actor) → rollout features more frequently, reduce operation costs (impacts) → improve release process, incorporate adaptive streaming algorithms, improve on-demand scaling (deliverables).

Case Studies

Enhancing a City’s Public Transportation System

Situation: A city wants to improve its public transportation system to encourage more people to use it and reduce road traffic.