“An hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing”
In every business, it is necessary to plan ahead for each aspect that can affect business in any possible way. So businesses must plan regarding product development, techniques to use for development, the impact that is going to form in the market, its supply chain, team impact and working, and a lot more. The more detailed and flexible planning more beneficial it will be. In agile this concept of planning is thoroughly understood and taken care of. One of the examples and beneficial planning of agile is impact mapping. In some parts of our life, we have faced that situation at work where everyone within the team is moving in a different direction. Missing the alignment between a business and IT results from it in confusion in the team about the final impact they are creating with their work. This problem which creates chaos among team members can be solved with impact mapping. Impact mapping is a strategic planning technique used to transfer business goals into actionable user stories that enterprises work upon. Impact mapping supports aligning the business outcomes to developing a feature that can provide us with product-providing functionality. Impact mapping can be used for
Ideating a product, to know if the feature we have an idea about is worth developing or not.
Helps in making decisions on proposed feature sets or in finalizing features
Helps in aligning business goals along with strategies hence the actionable plans for reaching the goals
Vision the technical deliverables will be created once introduced in the market
This helps in creating Product Backlogs, and roadmaps, and also in prioritizing the backlog items.
Creating an Impact map The very first requirement of creating an impact map is it must collaborate with business and IT professionals in a workshop. The workshop can be conveniently arranged as one or two days continuous or a series of 2 hours regularly for multiple days. Before starting the workshop we must answer the four questions to ensure that we have everything we need: For what benefit we are building this product? -It will help to answer about achieving the goal we are setting with this product. How can this help us in achieving the goal that we have set? -In impact mapping, we named such persons or individuals as an actor. These actors may include the customers or companies who will also work as customers in indirect ways. So here we will call out all possible Actors to verify if any specific deliverables their impact can provide us required for success. How is impact a product is having on the actors? -This question will also answer our customer’s behavior regarding our product which we want to change to achieve the goals we have set with it. What we can do to support change in actors’ behavior? -We need to come up with the ideas features and deliverables to create the impact we require on our actors or customers. Once these fundamental questions are answered we move towards prioritizing the features based on what is to be built first and then the next one. It is like creating a roadmap for the six months or year deliverables. With this done we now can know all the details like what needs to be changed, what kind of people change must happen, and also are we going to achieve the goals we have set. Hence this is what the impact map does. The impact map surfaces the assumptions, ensures and aligns our assumptions, and gives us the vision to verify the impact it will cause on our business. In business, it is about making an impact as quoted, “Without impact, innovation is just an idea with promise.” So it is always better to map the product impact and make sure which idea is to be carried forward and prioritized. About Advance Agility We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting, and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium, and large organizations across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients and move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting a human-centric approach to business agility. Embracing change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with an End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitors. Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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