Impact Mapping - Gojko Adzic
Specification by Example was very inspiring book I red several years ago. Finally I get in the point to read another book from Gojko - Impact Mapping.
I am glad to say that this book is also very good. It is kind of "Cookbook" for me and I like the way it is written - very easy to understand and summarizing all important things.
I can definitely recommend this book and here are some citations which I noted down:
- Gerald Weinberg defined quality as ‘value delivered to some person'.
- The role of testing becomes to prove that deliverables support desired actor behaviours, instead of comparing software features to technical expectations. If a deliverable does not support an impact, even if it works correctly from a technical perspective, it is a failure and should be treated as a problem, enhanced or removed.
- A common cause for the disconnect between business and delivery is that teams iteratively deliver items that are too small to make a difference from a business perspective. Projects become endless streams of small items going through the pipeline, with no big picture or big benefits.
- Iterative not incremental.
- Good goals should be translatable to money, so we can decide what the appropriate return on investment is.
- Not costs, but investments.
- Goals need to be measured.
- The ideal group to define the goals and draw the initial roadmap is a mix of technical experts and business decisionmakers. Without decision-makers the exercise is pretty much pointless, because they have to define the key objectives and approve alternative solutions.
- Criticising too early can kill the discussion before people have come up with good alternatives.