Abstract:Impact map is a good planning tool, it through a visual and structured form, the business objectives and product functions to establish a relationship, to ensure that the product functions are useful to customers, can bring revenue for the company, valuable.

This article is shared from Huawei Cloud Community “Planning Tools You Must Know – Impact Map”, originally written by Mei Shijie, Agile Jianghu Taohua Island.

The Importance of Goals

It’s a polar opposite story

There is a saying: “A good direction is better than a strong horse and a good car.” It comes from an allusions of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. There was a man who wanted to go to the State of Chu. He took a lot of money with him, hired a fine carriage, mounted a steed, and hired a driver who was skilled in driving. He did not listen to the passers-by and thought that it would be no problem for him to take advantage of his strong horse and good chariot, so he set out on his way to the north. As a result, he left the State of Chu further and further away. That’s the opposite story.

Figure 1: The polar opposite story

The Golden Circle

This story reminds me of the golden circle rule. In 2009, Simon Sinek proposed The Golden Circle in his TED talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. The Golden Circle Rule is like a structure of three concentric circles, from the inside out: why-> how-> WHAT. Think from the inside out. In the story, the man who wanted to go to the State of Chu just didn’t follow the “WHY”. He emphasized HOW to help him achieve his goal, such as a strong carriage, horses, and a driver with excellent skills. No matter HOW hard he tried, the direction was wrong.

Figure 2. The Golden Circle Rule

In his speech, Simon Sinek compared the ways of communication between ordinary companies and Apple Inc. and consumers, and explained that when people decide to buy, they are not buying products, but paying for their beliefs and purposes. That’s why it’s more important than what you do or how you do it.

Table 1 Comparison of sales communication between general companies and Apple

The importance of planning in software development

In software development, the same is true. According to survey data, only 20% of the software delivered is frequently used, and 80% is occasionally, rarely, and never used.

Table 2 Delivery software function utilization statistics

Therefore, in the product planning stage, it is very important to find out what the real requirements of customers or users are, so as to make the final product function really be used and have real value. Impact map is a good planning tool, it through a visual and structured form, the business objectives and product functions to establish a relationship, to ensure that the product functions are useful to customers, can bring revenue for the company, valuable.

Planning Tools – Impact Mappping

What is an impact map

The influence map was proposed by the agile master Gojko Adzi in the book Impact Mappping in 2012. The form is shown in the figure below. It is shown in a structured form through the analysis of why-> who-> how-> What at four levels. Establishes a relationship between business objectives (Why) and product functions (What), so that the team can clearly see how each function affects the realization of business objectives, and ensure that every product function done by the team is of value.

Figure 3 Impact map

The four levels are represented as follows:

  • Why: The goal, this is the core layer, to figure out Why the product is developed, what are the customer needs?
  • Who: Roles. If you want to achieve this goal, what roles will influence the achievement of the goal? Promoting it or hindering it? Who will be affected by it?
  • How does it affect you? How do these roles influence the goal? Help or hinder?
  • -Dan: What? What can we do to support the realization of these impacts? This can be product functionality, event operations, content delivery, etc. In actual work, we often entangle and get stuck in the “What” layer, thinking about What can help achieve the goal, while ignoring the two layers in the middle, and even forgetting the “Why” of the core layer.

The impact map presents our thinking logic by creating two assumptions between the reason Why (business goal) and the effect What (product function).

  • One is the influence hypothesis, in which different roles contribute to the attainment of goals through different influences.
  • One is the function hypothesis, where providing the corresponding product function or service can have such an impact.

Affects the use of maps

The use of maps is mainly influenced by three processes: setting goals, diverging ideas and converging conclusions. Let’s look at it with an example. The goal is to double the number of community developers within six months.

Figure 4. Example impact map

Set a goal

First, goals can be set according to SMART principles: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound. Doubling the number of community developers within 6 months meets the SMART principle.

Divergent thinking

Then, there is the process of divergence. After the goal is established, the structure after the hierarchical decomposition is similar to the form of mind map. Here, you can refer to the hierarchical rule of map, MECE: independent from each other and without omission; in short, there is no overlap and omission.

  • Non-overlapping: For example, when thinking about the second layer of roles, if they are divided into social figures, college students and community developers, there will be overlapping. Community developers include college students and social figures. Similarly, there cannot be such categories as university, training institution, publishing house and cooperative partner, because the first three categories all belong to the category of cooperative partner.
  • No omissions: This is not mandatory in the influence map, but can be mastered flexibly based on the current goal, usually if the key characters and key ideas are already on the map. If you want to get more ideas and ideas, you can brainstorm ways to spread out more content.

Conclusion the convergence

Finally, the process of convergence, we need to find one or several of the fastest and shortest paths on the influence map, rather than all the paths to go to. In the fourth layer, What is the specific action level. There may be a lot of actions on the critical path. At this time, priorities need to be sorted.

Figure 5 Investment Return Matrix

In this way, the framework of the map is used to guide us through requirements planning, and the goals are used to guide us down to functionality without being sideswiped. The products that the team works hard to make are really valuable and bring benefits and a sense of accomplishment to the company.

Not only in software development, influence maps can be used for anything that requires goal guidance. Whether in study, work or life, whether it is a big goal or a small goal, through the influence map, we can clearly show the value of each thing we do to achieve the goal.

Write in the last

Everyone knows the importance of goals, but often walk, walk forget the original intention, forget the road to. The influence map is not a silver bullet, not to complete a plan once and for all, in order to ensure the correct direction, but also need to be reviewed and adjusted regularly. We all have to think “big” when we do the little things in order to keep all the little things going in the right direction.

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