Impact Mapping provides essential guidance on using an efficient and effective technique that encourages product partners to build the right products--ones that have impact. Impact mapping, the subject of Gojko's lithe, approachable book, is an adaption of visual mapping technique (effect mapping).

Impact maps serve to align teams to business objectives, test mutual understanding of goals and expected outcomes, focus teams toward the highest value features to deliver, and enable collaborative decision-making. As such, impact maps--succinctly and approachably described in Gojko's book--is a key tool for collaborative strategic planning.

This is a book you can reference with ease as you plan and facilitate workshops (collaborative meetings with clear purpose and outcomes) for example: release or iteration planning, product roadmapping, process improvement, product and team chartering. And don't forget: it's not just for software products. You will find impact mapping and Gojko's book, useful for strategic alignment needed for any product--software, systems, or services.

Gojko's book is useful, useable and desirable--all the characteristics we want in a great resource! It is useful for building a shared understanding of the big "why's" for our work that is visual, fast to use, and encourages product partners to collaborate. It is useable--easy to read, including engaging cartoons and color, examples, references, and tips. It's desirable to build product that provide impact--aligns to goals and objectives and provide evidence of their value.

Try impact mapping and use Gojko's marvelous book, Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects to guide you to do your best, most impactful work.

This book was recommended to me by a coworker and I actually enjoyed reading it. It's a short, easy read with lots of graphics and simple, practical instructions on how to facilitate impact mapping.

I gave it 4 stars only because the first 3/4ths of the book were all a bit fluffy, explaining the benefits and methodologies applied in great detail without explaining how or what you do in impact mapping. The last quarter really spelled out the info you needed.

I would have preferred the ratio reversed - there were many questions and more details I would like to learn without picking up another book. Luckily the writer cited plenty of material for me to begin exploring!

Glad I read this - I really needed a tool like this for my current project at work.

As an industry, we are getting better at how we build software -- building it right -- but we don't always know what to build in the first place -- building the right thing. Impact Mapping provides a great visualization tool for collectively reasoning about what this "right thing" is, and how to put it in the context of our goals and our assumptions (both now made explicit) about why we think building this certain thing will help us reach our goal. I love the technique and this book provides a clear description that allowed me to start using it in practice.

It is a little light in content, which was intentional according to the author, but it covers all the bases without any redundant fluff, and it even makes space for some delightful illustrations.

To me, Impact Mapping is the next logical step in the path of Agile software development methods, as it extends the concepts of lightweight iteration and feedback to the process of deciding what to build, not just how we build it.

What I didn't like:

1. The 1st quarter of the book contains too much about the benefits of impact mapping without providing much context. e.g: Impact mapping solves the problem of X in the lean startup methodology.

It provides the "what" but doesn't provide much details on how and why it is better.

2. The book could be structured much better in a way the reader can absorb and implement Gojko ideas without understanding the whole concept. e.g: showing the readers the end result of what they can do after reading the book instead of filling it up with how good impact mapping is.

To be honest, readers don't care how great it is if it doesn't help them.

3. Not enough image and validity on how other companies are using Impact Mapping / case studies.

4. Too much tactic not enough strategy. The book doesn't provide enough fundamentals and reasoning on how impact mapping will benefit the readers.

5. The term Gojko used like "deliverables", "actors" and "impact" can be much better phrased to be much understandable. Every single time when deliverables is used, my brain have too rephrase it too features.

What I like:

1. I love the structure of impact mapping on how we must think of the impact first instead of thinking of features to build.

2. The book is short and can be read in 1 go.

With a bit of restructuring and optimising so that the readers can implement this quickly in their business, I believe this book can be on par or even better than the Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Being able to visualize the answer to the why, who, how and what a project aims to solve for is impactful (no pun intended) in its own right, never mind the simple methodology advised in practicing this. I think quite novel in the concept and implementation and one that I'm interested to test further in my working environment. Would have preferred some more detailed examples to aid understanding, but jumped across to supporting website where needed.

Quote:

- In essence, you should care about impact mapping because it can help you build products and deliver projects that make an impact, not just ship software.

Great book! Quick read, good graphics. This book has helped me change the way I manage products and focus on User and Business outcomes. This is such a solid way to ensure your work returns results and stops scope creep in its tracks.

I think the book is great for fulfilling its promise - give a short guide to the impact mapping technique with further references. It's good that it's short as it keeps focus. At the same time, it covers everything important: the idea, the benefits, the how-to and the pitfalls.

I would recommend it to everyone interested in agile management practices. This should not be restricted to managers. Engineers might find the book useful as well because everyone should make good decisions on the scope of an agile product, especially in small teams.

I assume the technique should be usable in many areas, not just software. I don't see anything software-specific in the book. Any goal oriented business following agile management approach should find impact mapping useful.

I just used this book to help drive some process ideation and alignment for a new IT Dept. initiative. The model described in this book has already helped with the planning of our approach and how to bridge what has been a long-standing gap. I am really looking forward putting the information/model to work. While the examples are easy and just enough to understand the concepts, I would have liked to see more graphic/visual examples to show how some of the mitigation activities work/affect the model. That being said, I think this is a great book overall and practical for immediate use, in conjunction with your existing knowledge/skillsets.

Técnica visual, simples e prática para uso em cerimônias de refinamento de demandas nas quais diferentes perfis precisam estar alinhados sobre a necessidade do cliente e as alternativas para impacta-lo. Leitura mais de recomendada!

Mi é piaciuto lo stile sintetico e dritto al punto.

Ottime le note e i rimandi ai testi di approfondimento, così evitando di dover leggere un libro troppo lungo ha permesso di focalizzare sul nocciolo.

Bellissimi gli esempi reali usati per fare comprendere lo schema

Lo consiglio agli imprenditori e professionisti

Too much theory and the practical tips are not tha special.

I trialled this technique on a recent green fields software project and found it really useful in helping define purposeful scope.

Impact Mapping is an extremely helpful yet (kind of) simple method to explore options on a high level perspective and support decision making. It will help you keep a big picture (of your project or product development) in mind, while making rational decisions and planning experiments in order to get the biggest/fastest business value. It is rare that I want to post every second sentence of a book on our internal company newsletter. A must read for managers, agilists and decision makers.