Impact map

A powerful tool to visualize the efforts needed to be done to realize a particular effect/goal.

To create an Impact Map, draw a mind-map by answering these questions:

• Why are we doing this? What is the desired business change? This is the business goal. Put that
goal in the centre of the map so that you can always keep that in mind.

• Who are the people that can create the desired effect? Who can contribute to the goal or affect
it? These are the project stakeholders. Put the stakeholders on the second level of the mind- map.

• For each element on the second level: How can the target group contribute or obstruct the
desired effect? In real life, not in software. These are stakeholder needs. Put them on the third
level of the map.
• For selected elements on the third level: What are the business activities or software capabilities
that would support the needs of the stakeholders? These are features. Features are at the fourth
level of the map.

Based on the tree of "why, who, how and what” a selection is made about which elements to
focus on. The important part is to ensure that if multiple parts are needed to ensure success are
identified. E.g. we are creating software but have not involved marketing to ensure there is a
market awareness about it.
Cookbook on how to facilitate an impact mapping exercise:

Duration: 1-3 hours depending on goal/product/solution/market maturity

Participants:
 Agile coach (required)
 Product owner (required)

 SME (optional)
 Business stakeholders (optional)
 UX (optional)

Input to workshop:
 Product vision
 User pain points
 Idea about the desired goal – preferable a measurable goal/effect

 Facilitation
o brown paper or whiteboard
o post-its – different colours and sizes
o sharpies

Activities during session:

1. Gather everyone around brown paper on the wall or the white board
2. WHY: PO to present and explain the “Why”. Why are we doing this? The why is the goal
that should be achieved – the effect we want to see. It should be measurable in some way.
Revenue, user adoption, satisfaction score etc.
3. WHO: Map out the people that can help us achieve the goal. Its very important to go
broad. Business managers, users, software developers, HR, Marketing etc. Everyone who
can influence weather or not the goal could be achieved.
4. HOW: this is what the people from “who” should do to initiate the change towards the
desired effect from “why”. This is usually not necessarily something that requires software
to be developed. The focus is on an action or behaviour.
5. WHAT: this is the more actionable solution ideas. Could require software to be developed
but could also be more analogue solutions. If a “what” is software related it would typically
translate into an epic. Perhaps it can be fitted into one iteration.
6. For each combination of “who-how-what” discuss how much impact that particular
“branch” can create
7. Decide on what mix of branches to prioritize start working on
8. If possible define more specifically KPI’s how much each branch can/should contribute to
the overall goal/WHY
Output of workshop and next steps:
 Combination of branches constitutes the high-level backlog of needs and transformed into
epics in backlog

 Pro-tip:
o Epics / user stories can be constructed fairly easily from an impact map by taking
each branch and transferring each level.

User story/epic
As a “WHO”
I want to be able to “HOW”
So that I can achieve “WHY”
Acceptance criteria
“WHAT” fleshed out