Impact Mapping Template
Set business goals and outline how to achieve them.
About the Impact Mapping template
What is Impact Mapping?
Impact mapping is a strategic planning technique. It allows organizations to stay on track while building products and shipping goods and services. An impact map is a graphical representation of your goals and the steps you must take to deliver on them. By creating an impact map, you can clearly communicate with your teammates, align on business objectives, and build better roadmaps.
When building products or working on projects, it can be easy to lose sight of your role within the broader organization. But your projects have a dynamic relationship with everything else in the organization, including other projects, teams, products, and functions. Many planning techniques lack this big-picture view. Impact maps, by contrast, help you visualize the relationship between your project roadmaps and the rest of your organization. You can therefore capture key assumptions and scope so you can deliver solutions without waste or over-engineering.
When should you use Impact Mapping?
You can use Impact Mapping to help you decide what should be in a product, prove to a client that it’s not worth investing in a particular feature and plan your next sprint or release. You can also use Impact Mapping for any type of project planning.
What are the key steps of Impact Mapping?
Impact Mapping is generally broken into 4 key steps: setting and describing business goals, identifying the personas, defining the actions these personas will take, and brainstorming the deliverables that will prompt these actions to take place.
How do you create an Impact Map?
Creating an impact map is simple and easy to do if you follow these steps. You can use our Impact Mapping Template and discuss everything with your team in real-time using Miro’s virtual collaboration platform.
Step 1: Decide on your goals
Start by drawing a box that contains your goal. Why are we doing this project? What do we hope to achieve?
Step 2: Identify the actors
Draw a branch that links your goal to your next box: the actors. Who can produce the effect we’re looking for? Who can obstruct who? Who are our customers or users? Who will be impacted by our goal? Many people choose to have a box for each actor. Connect each box to your goal.
Step 3: Determine the impacts or actions
The second branch brings the impact of your goal into sharper focus. How should our actors’ behavior change as a result of this goal? How can they help us achieve our goal? How might they prevent us from achieving our goal? Draw a box for each potential impact and connect them to your actors.
Step 4: Define the deliverables
Once you have answered those questions, you can start thinking about the scope of your project. The third branch of the map deals with deliverables. What can we do to increase the likelihood that this goal will be achieved? How do we support the desired impact? These are your deliverables -- what you can hope to achieve within the scope of this project.
Get started with this template right now.
Cross Functional Flowchart
Works best for:
Org Charts, Business Management
Have a quick look at everyone on a project and see exactly what they’ll contribute. That’s the clarity and transparency a cross-functional flowchart will give you. These are also called “swim lane” flowcharts because each person (each customer, client, or representative from a specific function) is assigned a lane—a clear line—that will help you visualize their roles at each stage of the project. This template will empower you to streamline processes, reduce inefficiencies, and make meaningful cross-functional relationships.
Customer Problem Statement Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Design Thinking, Product Management
Put yourself in the shoes of your consumers with a customer problem statement. Figure out their problems and how your product or service can solve those problems and make their lives easier. As a bonus, you’ll better understand your customers throughout the process.
Customer Problem Statement Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Design Thinking, Product Management
Put yourself in the shoes of your consumers with a customer problem statement. Figure out their problems and how your product or service can solve those problems and make their lives easier. As a bonus, you’ll better understand your customers throughout the process.
Company Organizational Chart
Works best for:
Org Charts, Operations, Mapping
An org chart is a visual guide that sums up a company’s structure at a glance—who reports to whom and who manages what teams. But it does more than just display the chain of command. It also showcases the structure of different departments and informs employees who to reach out to with issues and concerns. That makes it an especially valuable tool for new hires who are getting familiar with the company. Our templates make it easy for you to add your entire team and customize the chart with colors and shapes.
Affinity Diagram Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Mapping, Product Management
You can use an affinity diagram to generate, organize, and consolidate information that comes out of a brainstorming session. Whether you’re building a product, working through a complex problem, establishing a process, or piecing apart an issue, an affinity diagram is a useful and simple framework that gives each team member the opportunity to pitch in and share their thoughts. But it’s not just ideal for brainstorms—this is a great template and tool when you need to reach consensus or analyze data such as survey results.
Pros and Cons List Template
Works best for:
Decision Making, Documentation, Strategic Planning
A pros and cons list is a simple but powerful decision-making tool used to help understand both sides of an argument. Pros are listed as arguments in favor of making a particular decision or action. Cons are listed arguments against it. By creating a list that details both sides of the argument, it becomes easier to visualize the potential impact of your decision. To make your pros and cons list even more objective, it can help to weight each pro and con against the others. You can then present your decision with confidence, making a strong argument for why it’s the right one.