This article is adapted from Ruddy Lee’s blog in Taiwan. Impact Mapping is an amazing visualization tool. By the time you finish reading this article, you will love it.

allusions

Following the great contribution of Example of Specification (June 2011) (which won the 2012 Jolt Award for Book of the Year), Gojko Adzic said that I will work harder in the field of requirements. Please look forward to it.

He didn’t have to wait long. In October 2012, he released Impact Mapping, a three-part, 73-page booklet.

The booklet explains only one thing: how to visualize the concept – Impact Mapping. It demonstrates the ability to “visualize requirements” by using a simple why-who-how-what analysis, coupled with a structured display, so that engineers can see which of the business goals the hard-worked functions are corresponding to.

Ha ha! It’s the other way around, because it works well when the requirements are extremely abstract (concepts), and it makes the business goals clear and allows everyone to see in a more abstract way what functionality is needed to achieve the business goals. Its ability to cascade a relevant influence path and make requirements visible through the graphical representation of the correlation contributes greatly to the early work of prototyping a product.

  • Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects
  • Map of Impact: Let your software make a real impact

Impact Mapping to Analyze Movies — Alternative Interpretation

This is one of my favorites, the use of film to illustrate the plot of a speech (it started around 2005, and the first movie I remember talking about was Kino. Levi’s exorcist, Constantine, is technically exploring the theory of Microsoft’s Message Queue. The technique is to play a 2 – to 3-minute film clip in the speech. Through the visual images, the students try to associate with the theme of the speech, and achieve a more effective resonance than listening to the speaker alone. When I use it a lot, it becomes a natural feature of my speeches. Some familiar students always stop by before class to ask which film will be shown today? !

However, this time impact mapping is really used to analyze the movie, which has nothing to do with technology. Under the guise of using its visualization ability, people who have not seen the movie can be familiar with each scene just like the drama director (it seems to be an exaggeration, in essence, it is just drawing its path. If you want to fully understand it, Read along with the script, as for all the functional descriptions, that’s the “script” for each actor), understand what each scene is trying to accomplish and what it is trying to accomplish. Below is a map of The influence of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (perhaps because its theme song is so catchy that The movie was chosen as a model). It’s called: Stay Alive.

From left to right; In order are the goals the film aims to achieve, the important characters, the features that the characters emphasize, the components needed to make those features, and finally, what kind of drama is used to achieve those effects. (Having a path to follow, like sketching out the whole picture, is what we all want most when we’re in a blur. Find a path to follow.

Try this data and start telling a story:

  • Why: Find the 25th negative for the cover story of the last issue of the magazine.
  • The main character (Who): Walter. Walter Mitty(Ben Stiller)
  • (1) I like to daydream. (2) He is a typical otaku.
  • The description that affects this personality (What): (1) often appears to be in a daze, fantasy. (2) It is very easy to be impressed by the scene. (3) the trauma left over from a teenage job, etc.
  • Scenario: This is added by myself. Because want to do such personality description, should have what kind of setting to do cooperate, prepare to use how many actors, prepare to shoot how long negative film (namely the cost of preparation cost) and script.

It’s just a neat diagram of a goal, a statement.

  • The first layer, Who: point out the main character
  • The second layer, How: How to describe the characteristics of the case
  • List the factors that influence it

Then, based on these factors, I design scenes that can be shown and achieved to arouse the resonance of the audience. Finally, we check whether these pieces can achieve our default goal. That’s OK! The extremely abstract outline of a play can be formed.

Looking at this diagram, whether it’s the director or the actor or the theater manager, depending on this description, it’s as if they see the whole picture of the character in the script, and they begin to have a basic outline, what we call the outline of the main character, the character, (Note that Impact Mapping is used to describe the Impact factors of some paths, and then analyze the Impact with or without it. It is not used to analyze the whole picture of all related paths. That is too complicated. Because the outline of the story is too complicated, usually far beyond the category of this way of in-line analysis, or correlation is too complex and too tall, it is hard to picture out, or simply to draw not to come out, so we hardly draw all the related factors, only focus on want to explore the path of the).

To be honest, I love using it to analyze movies. And every time I analyze movies, I always feel like I can be a director (maybe I should introduce this method to Ang Lee!). .

So I’m going to share what I’ve learned with you in this video. But when it comes to software development, how do you convert it?

Take a look at its user stories (use cases, I should say) :

As the protagonist of daydream adventurer, I hope to be able to act in a daze and fantasy. From now on, when people refer to Walter Mitty, they will think of me as a daydreamer.

That’s the movie. Let’s get down to business!

  • “Who Who” refers to the user
  • “What What” is the right wish
  • “How to” in relation to benefits.

We can easily guide relevant user stories from visual influences. This is a point of relevance when we tell stories to others.

A side note: when writing a user story, write three cards instead of one.

  • The first story card describes the actual story;
  • The second is a placeholder. Leave room for the changes we must make once we get to the first story;
  • The third story card completes the optimizations needed to make those changes.

In this way, you’ll soon have a lot of stories, and when you get too much information, you’ll lose sight of the real work, and that’s where the user story map comes in

The following passage, taken from a Chinese translation, is a standard textbook and can be found everywhere. But remember; After watching a favorite movie, the production of its influence map, will have a sense of achievement!

What is an impact map?

A simple yet highly effective collaborative approach to strategic planning.

Impact Mapping is a strategic planning technique that illustrates how teams can adjust their activities to overall business goals and make better milestone decisions by clearly communicating assumptions. Impact Mapping can help organizations avoid getting lost in building products and delivering projects.

Impact maps can be used to effectively assess delivery as one of the criteria for quality feedback.

Affects the structure of the map

It is the following thinking logic and organizational structure:

(Why) — > (Who) — > (How) — > (What)

That is, Why are our goals, Who is needed to influence How and What we need to do to achieve them. Impact maps make a real impact by building products and delivering projects to achieve business goals.

Affect map features

  • Structure: A structured approach to carding and mining from business goals to deliverables, goals — roles — impacts — outputs.
  • Holistic: A tree-like logical map that connects a goal to a specific deliverable.
  • Collaborative: Stakeholders communicate, discuss and collaborate together, digging out and sharing the default thinking logic hidden in individual minds.
  • Dynamic: dynamic adjustment, iterative evolution, proven learning.
  • Visualization: A clear view of a coherent structure that can be seen and read at a glance.

It will be a variety of roles in different perspectives, different thinking logic, different assumptions, through the way of visualization and collaboration to organize, explain the relevance of the connection, all of a sudden string together. By linking deliverables, impacts, and goals, impact maps show the cause-and-effect relationships that led to a particular feature, as well as visualizing the assumptions made by various stakeholders. These assumptions include: the goals for business delivery, the stakeholders involved, and the impact of the view drawing. At the same time, the impact map communicates two levels of causality assumption:

  • Delivery changes the character’s behavior and has an impact.
  • Once the impact is achieved, the relevant roles contribute to the overall goal.

summary

The influence map can serve as a useful input to the user story map, which can produce user stories in an orderly way rather than the clutter that we often produce when we brainstorm — a good organizing tool. It allows us to see the connection between user stories and business value, which prevents us from making a bunch of features that don’t make business sense.

The last; It allows us to clearly determine which features need to be done and which can be left out as we adjust our business goals.

Let’s end it with a movie! Influence maps are extremely abstract visual artifacts, like the relationship diagrams in a play. To know the actual details of the work, read the play/script! Next time. Let’s talk about a user story map, which is what I call a playbook!

Attached are the students’ works during the class:

Li Zhihua (Taiwan, China)


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