Introduction to Impact Mapping
Today I'd like to share with you one of the product management frameworks that can be useful for any agile team member: Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, Software Engineers, Quality Assurance Engineers, and other agile practitioners.
This framework is Impact Mapping.
In this post, we will cover the following topics:
✅ What is an Impact Mapping?
✅ When can you rely on the Impact Mapping framework?
✅ How to create an Impact Map? We will cover a step-by-step process of creating a map with examples.
What is Impact Mapping?
Impact Mapping is a framework to strategize and plan product design and development, from defining problems to brainstorming and prioritizing specific solutions to that problem.
Gojko Adzic first introduced Impact Mapping in 2012 in his book, and since then, it has been used and acknowledged by many cross-functional teams, including product teams.
One of the major benefits of this technique is that it prevents teams from getting solution-centric or losing the focus while building products or delivering product features.
It is a collaborative and visual technique that communicates the "desired impact" you want to produce "on or via the user" to meet the overall "Goal" agreed upon by the team.
Impact Mapping framework
When can you rely on the Impact Mapping framework?
⭐️ To create alignments among key product stakeholders
Stakeholders alignment is a major yet one of the most challenging tasks of every Product Manager.
Regardless of whether you are tasked to develop a new product from scratch or work on improving and growing an existing product - you have to get buy-in from other teams (stakeholders) involved in the product development process.
Specifically, you want to agree on the following topics:
Business objectives you are trying to solve.
Problems you are tackling and for whom.
Possible solutions that can solve the problems.
What are the risks associated with the solutions? For instance, the chance that your organization cannot afford the cost of solution development, that your sales team doesn't have enough capabilities or resources to sell it, or that there is no technology available to develop the solution.
By following the Impact mapping framework, you can define these questions with your stakeholders before approaching your new product initiative.
⭐️ To prepare the Product Requirements Document.
In addition to stakeholders' alignment, an Impact mapping is a helpful framework for writing product requirements documents (PRDs) (aka Product Briefs or Product Specs or Product Proposals).
PRD is a primary document that communicates clear goals of developing a product (or next product release), the stakeholders involved, and how the goal will be achieved (solutions). It's created by a PM and shared with key product stakeholders at the beginning of the product development process.
The question of how to create a PRD, what format to use, and what information to include is something that every PM is struggling with at some point, especially when joining a company where product management processes are not properly defined and standardized across teams.
Effectively, you define your future PRD by going through every step of the impact mapping framework. And everything you need at the end is just to put the information on a paper and share it with your stakeholders.
Step-by-step process of creating an Impact Map
Step 1 Define WHY?
The first task we have to do is align on the goal we want to achieve.
Think of a goal through "business lenses" - what benefits will your business (company) gain after implementing a product improvement or launching a new product?
The goal should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Timely.
For example:
Increase the number of monthly active users by 5% in 3 months.
Increase the conversion rate of free to paid customers by 5% in 6 months.
Reduce out-of-stock cases to less than 5% in 6 months.
Step 2 Define WHO
The next step is to define "Actors". Actors could be everyone who can help you achieve the desired goal or, on the contrary, impede you from achieving the goal.
If you know the term "Persona" and now think if it's the same as an "Actor," - the answer is not exactly.
While "Persona" refers mainly to a customer or user of a product, "Actor" includes not only customers and users but also:
Company's partners.
Internal stakeholders or teams such as Legal, Finance, or Security Department.
And even your competitors!
So actors are everyone who can influence the goal you want to achieve.
Step 3 Define HOW
In this step, we define HOW Actors should act or change their behavior to fulfill the goal set in the first step.
Check yourself by asking the following questions:
What do Actors need to do so that our goal is achieved?
How can Actors behave differently to fulfill the goal?
How can Actors stop us from achieving the goal?
Never confuse impacts we define on this level with specific solutions (product functions or features) that will be defined only in step 4.
Example:
Imagine that you are a Product Manager for a subscription-based mentorship platform that helps people working in tech grow professionally and become better leaders. The mentees submit their questions on the platform and get matched with experienced industry mentors using a set of criteria: seniority level, type of expertise, size of the company, specifics of the question, etc. Once matched, the mentee and mentor set up a meeting to chat about the question.
Let's say that your team's objective for this year is to increase subscription revenue.
Here is the list of your main actors in charge of that goal:
Mentees.
Mentors.
Customer success team.
Partnership team.
Now, let's brainstorm what every Actor can do so that our goal is achieved.
Mentees can... get a long-term mentor to develop a deeper relationship over six months.
Mentors can... provide relevant and timely insights to mentees so that the mentees' challenges (questions) are resolved.
The customer success team can...ensure that mentees are satisfied with the mentorship program and look for a long-term partnership.
The partnership team can...onboard more mentors to the platforms to increase the number of relevant matches.
Step 4 Define WHAT
In this step, we finally define possible solutions (also called "deliverables") for every Actor to create the Impact we specified in step 3.
Don't focus on highlighting detailed solutions at this step. Instead, focus on defining just the high-level scope of your solution. Later on, you would be able to decompose it further to more detailed levels, e.g., specific use-cases or user stories.
Don't feel overwhelmed with the many solutions you are proposing here. It's just a list of possible options (or experiments) you will be testing to achieve the primary goal. Just a few of them will be delivered.
Let's look at solution examples for two of the impacts we defined in step 3 to increase the subscription revenue of the mentorship platform.
If mentees can get a long-term mentor to develop a deeper relationship over six months, then...
Mentees can see the mentor's availability for the next six months
Mentees can book mentors in advance for the next six months
If mentors can provide relevant and timely insights to mentees so that the mentees' challenges (questions) are resolved, then...
The mentor can send questions regarding the mentee's expectations before every meeting.
Step 5 Prioritize
As we already discussed, we will not build all possible solutions listed in the Impact Map. Instead, we must prioritize only those that could help us reach our goal faster and with minimum resources (effort) required from our team to design/develop it.
There are many prioritization techniques you can use here, for example, the RICE framework, first introduced by Intercom.
RICE is an acronym for the four factors used to assess every product opportunity or project:
Reach - Number of customers impacted (by a product change).
Impact - On the customer (and the business), on a scale from 3 (massive Impact) to 0.25 (minimum Impact).
Confidence - Your confidence level (%) about your estimates of other factors (reach, Impact, effort).
Effort - Total amount of time (person-months) a project will take from all product team members (and other actors involved).
Step 6 Create the PRD
And finally, you include the key points from the Impact Map (Why, Who, How, and What) into the PRD.
And don't forget to share it with your team and other stakeholder involved.
Final recommendations
To achieve an alignment, run an Impact Mapping workshop with your key product stakeholders at the beginning of a project.
To understand the problem better and prepare for the workshop, do initial research regarding a situation (e.g., interview some of the actors and do competitors' analysis to see what solutions are available)
After your first workshop:
Collect further insights about a problem.
Revise the Impact Map.
Share it with your stakeholder to review and agree.
What can you do next?
✅ Sign up for the next cohort of the Product Incubation Program designed for aspiring and early-stage Product Managers.
In the eight-week online virtual program, you'll have a chance to practice the Impact Mapping framework and many other essential frameworks and tools we use in Product Management. All without overwhelm and guessing what to do at each step of product development. Check out program details here.
✅ Join our Telegram community of aspiring Product Managers to ask me a question regarding this post or any other product-related question you have.
✅ Check out my Instagram for daily bite-sized updates on product management, tech, startups & innovations.