Impact Mapping, published in October 2012, is a practical guide to impact mapping, a simple yet incredibly effective method for collaborative strategic planning that helps organisations make an impact with software. Impact mapping helps to create better plans and roadmaps that ensure alignment of business and delivery, and are easily adaptable to change. Impact mapping fits nicely into several current trends in software product management and release planning, including goal-oriented requirements engineering, frequent iterative delivery, agile and lean software methods, lean startup product development cycles, and design thinking.
The primary audience of this book are senior people involved in building software products or delivering software projects, from both business and delivery sides. This includes business sponsors and those whose responsibilities include product ownership, project oversight or portfolio management, architecture, business analysis, quality improvement and assurance and delivery. My experience is mostly with iterative delivery, so I write from that perspective, and you’ll get most out of these ideas if you work in a similar environment.
- Business people assigned to software projects will learn how to communicate their ideas better.
- Senior product or project sponsors will learn how to communicate their assumptions more effectively to delivery teams, how to engage delivery teams to make better strategic decisions, and how to manage their project portfolio more effectively.
- Delivery teams that are already working under the umbrella of agile or lean delivery methods, and more recently lean startup ideas, will learn how to better focus deliverables and engage business sponsors and users.
- Delivery teams moving to agile or lean delivery methods will get ideas on how to address some common issues with scaling these practices, such as creating a big picture view, splitting work into small chunks that still have business value and reporting progress more meaningfully.
##Reviews
Gojko’s book is useful, user-friendly, and desirable—all the characteristics we want in a great resource. Ellen Gottesdiener
Loved the book. If you take agile or lean seriously you should check it out. It’s a great tool that can will you. Marcus Hammarberg
I believe this is what many teams are missing in their development cycle, answering the question “ Are they really building something that matters”. In Impact Mapping, Gojko Adzic has brought together many ideas from different sources. Simplicity at its finest – complex ideas presented in an easy to read manner. Janet Gregory
After reading this book, I started using this technique for the next milestone of our current project, and in just a short time, it has led us to making better decisions about prioritization. Kevin Albrecht
This is a refreshingly thin books that should be easily accessible to anyone involved in software projects irrespective of their technical skill level or team role. Well worth a look by everyone Richard Fennell
