Book Information

Book ID Asin: 0955683645
Book Title: Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects
Book Author: Gojko Adzic,Marjory Bisset,Tom Poppendieck
Book Format: unknown Book Price: unknown
Book Category: Books, Computers & Technology, Computer Science and unknown
Book Rating: 377 ratings

Book Product Detail

• Best Sellers Rank: #857,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #364 in Computer Systems Analysis & Design (Books)
  • #2,696 in Software Design, Testing & Engineering (Books)
  • #3,401 in Computer Science (Books)

• Customer Reviews:
  4.3 out of 5 stars 377 ratings

unknown

Book Review

Name: Kyle M.
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book with just enough information/detail to be useful
Date: Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2022
Review: 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.

Name: Ellen Gottesdiener
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Essential guidance in a useful, useable format on a technique that encourages product partners to build the right product
Date: Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2012
Review: 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.

Name: hx9
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Written Copy of What's Already Available Online
Date: Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2021
Review: Impact mapping materials already exist online in abundance from both the author and other sources. Unless you're building a library of physical materials, this book probably isn't worth it.

The best part of the book are the illustrations and examples, though as I said, equivalent ones are available online for free.

One of the worst parts of the book is references to negatives or black hat thinking when it comes to what we build, but examples of that and how to handle them are very slim in the book. They are referenced, and acknowledging them is half the battle.

Name: Stanley Tan
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Too much tactic and not enough strategy
Date: Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2014
Review: 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.

Name: David Snook
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Build the Right Thing
Date: Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2016
Review: 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.

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