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.
Pedigree Diagram Template
Works best for:
Education
Use our Pedigree Diagram Template to show how traits and diseases are passed from one generation to the next. Whether you’re a doctor, farmer, or just someone interested in genetics, a Pedigree Diagram can help you identify hereditary traits.
Likert Scale Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Decision Making, Product Management
It’s not always easy to measure complex, highly subjective data — like how people feel about your product, service, or experience. But the Likert scale is designed to help you do it. This scale allows your existing or potential customers to respond to a statement or question with a range of phrases or numbers (e.g., from “strongly agree” to “neutral,” to “strongly disagree,” or from 1 to 5). The goal is to ask your customer some specific questions to turn into easy-to-interpret actionable user insights.
Project Management Flow Chart
Works best for:
Flowcharts, Diagrams, Mapping
The Project Management Flow Chart template offers a visual tool for planning and managing projects using flowchart diagrams. It provides elements for mapping out project phases, tasks, dependencies, and timelines. This template enables project managers and teams to visualize project workflows, identify critical paths, and track progress effectively. By promoting clarity and transparency, the Project Management Flow Chart empowers organizations to deliver projects on time, within budget, and according to specifications.
Google Cloud Architecture Diagram Template
Works best for:
Software Development, Diagrams
Use the Google Cloud Architecture Diagram template to clearly visualize the deployment of your application and allow you and your team to optimize processes. The GCP template gives you a great overview of your application architecture, and it helps you to iterate quickly and better manage your application development, deployment, and documentation. Try it out and see if it works for you.
Bar Graph Template
Works best for:
Operations, Diagrams
Bar graphs are an excellent way to compare different types of categories and datasets visually. Many professionals use this type of graph to support their presentations and make data storytelling more understandable. With just a few clicks, use this bar graph template and customize it according to your needs.
SAFe Program Board
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Diagrams, Agile Workflows
Many organizations use the Agile model, but even companies that don’t rigorously adhere to all Agile standards have adopted Agile tools and methods like Program Increment (PI) Planning. Even if you’re not participating in a formal PI session, a program board can be a great way to establish communication across teams and stakeholders, align development objectives with business goals, clarify dependencies, and foster cross-functional collaboration. The board provides much-needed structure to planning sessions, yet is adaptable enough to accommodate brainstorming and alignment meetings.