ANSWER

Impact Mapping is a lightweight strategic‐planning technique, created by Gojko Adzic, that draws a visual mind-map linking business goals to the smallest set of deliverables needed to meet them. By answering four cascading questions—Why (Goal) → Who (Actors) → How (Impacts) → What (Deliverables) - it ensures every backlog item exists for a measurable, traceable reason.

Impact Mapping gives analysts a fast, collaborative lens for tying every requirement to a tangible business outcome, letting teams cut waste and steer products toward real, measurable value.

Core Structure

• WHY – Goal: One quantified objective with a deadline (e.g., “Reduce average refinance cycle from 22 days to 15 by Q4”).

• WHO – Actors: People, systems, or partners that can help or hinder reaching the goal.

• HOW – Impacts: Specific behavioral changes we want from each actor (e.g., “Borrowers upload documents within 24 h”).

• WHAT – Deliverables: Features, process tweaks, or policy changes most likely to trigger those impacts.

Typical Workshop Flow

1. Convene sponsor, BA, UX, dev, and ops in a short workshop.
2. Agree on a single north-star goal and verify its metric.
3. List potential actors; rank by leverage.
4. For each actor, brainstorm desired impacts; challenge with “Will this behavior really move the metric?”
5. Ideate deliverables; delete anything without a clear impact path.
6. Slice the map vertically into thin, testable releases; translate priority branches into epics and user stories.
7. Track progress by monitoring the impact metric—not just feature completion—and revisit the map as evidence changes.

Why It Matters to Business / Systems Analysts

Impact Mapping compresses strategy and delivery onto one page, replacing speculative scope with testable hypotheses. It prevents gold-plating, supplies a built-in traceability matrix, and promotes outcome-based KPIs—exactly the artefacts analysts need for governance, budgeting, and benefits realization.

Example

A mortgage lender wanted first-pass underwriting approvals to hit 90 %. Actors were underwriters, borrowers, and the credit-bureau API. Desired impacts included “borrowers attach complete income docs” and “underwriters spend <30 min per file.” The map highlighted three high-leverage deliverables: a mobile document-scanner with completeness checks, a credit-pull microservice, and an underwriter workload dashboard. Focusing only on these behavior-changing items lifted first-pass approvals from 72 % to 94 % in three months—without adding staff.