Most companies are full of people with good ideas. More good ideas than resources to realise them. Hence the problem for most companies is how to prioritise and align the organisation so everyone pulling in the same direction.
Every PM knows it's part of their job to discover the needs of their stakeholders. There are always more needs than capacity to satisfy them. So we need to prioritise. We create backlogs, roadmaps, delivery plans... and yet still often find ourselves in the crosshairs of our stakeholders and in the need to return to the drawing board.
Our stakeholders often get frustrated with the Product because they don't know how we work, they are not part of the prioritisation process. Here is where Impact Mapping comes into play. We can use it as a method to have deep and meaningful conversations with our stakeholders regarding our plans and priorities. Moreover, it could be an effective collaboration tool ensuring all people involved in building products have the same understanding and steering efforts in the same direction.
Show them the money
As product managers, we often get caught up in our own world. We act on the assumption that if we understand our stories, backlogs, roadmaps, plans - then everyone else should too. But they don't. Every stakeholder group we need to satisfy has their own problems to deal with, priorities to consider and goals to hit. To effectively collaborate with all stakeholders we need to come up with a common lingo. Impact Mapping could be that lingo.Backlogs, roadmaps, delivery plans are all important and useful artefacts, however, when it comes to negotiating priorities you need something more visual. Something that very clearly shows the connection between what you plan to do and the impact on company goals that you want to make. Enter - Impact Mapping.
Clearly showing how outputs connect to outcomes and to making a real difference is the superpower of the Impact Mapping method. Every stakeholder group wants to make a difference, have an impact. You can capture those on your map and discuss with them what outcomes and outputs could lead to the desired results.
Be as broad as you can when drawing your impact map. Listen to every stakeholder group and you are guaranteed to find some novel outputs you haven't considered. If you also discovering many new outcomes, actors and impacts - it could be a sign of poor alignment within your org or that you as a PM lack some important context to do your job well.
What else we could be doing?
Having the first version of your impact map is only the beginning. Now it's time to discuss alternatives. Use the following questions to guide you:- Are those the most important impacts to have?
- Will those outcomes lead to the desired impact?
- What other outcomes we didn't consider?
- Did we describe all the actors? Do we have a common understanding of the actors?
- What hidden or unexpected actors we might have forgotten to consider?
- Why would actors care to act?
- Did we consider enough possible outputs?
- Have we validated the outputs? (feasibility, value, usability)
- What are the constraints on the outcomes and the outputs? (time, legal, competitive)
- Do we have any data to back it up?
Come up with more questions like that, and work together with your stakeholders to gain a common understanding of the challenge at hand.
Tips on using Impact Mapping for collaboration
Co-create
Turn impact mapping sessions into full-fledged workshops with your stakeholders. Explain the basics of Impact Mapping to them and let your stakeholders draw their own maps, compare, debate.Extend
Every element of an impact map could be infused with additional context - measurements for impacts, personas for actors, dashboards for outcomes, prototypes for outputs and so on. Put as many details on the map as relevant to you.Measure
Impact Map should be reviewed after each cycle and you should have a collective postmortem to learn and improve. Impacts should be measured but so as outcomes and even outputs. For example, it is useful to measure outputs so you know how many your team could chase in every cycle.Communicate
Use the Impact Map as your main communication tool to your stakeholders and also the rest of the organisation. More on that in the next post on Impact Mapping.Done right Impact Mapping will bring you closer to your stakeholders and to a common understanding of how you plan to make your product successful. It will also help align your entire organisation and galvanise your people to pull in the same direction.