Product Management using Effect Mapping (#agileTD 2011)

This talk was held by Gojko Adzic (@gojkoadzic) as a replacement for Markus Gärtner (@mgaertne), who unfortunately has been sick.
I found it was a quite challenging topic, therefor I didn’t take much notes, and my article might be quite fraqmentary. If you feel so, please scroll down to the very end, there I will link to some stuff on Gojko’s homepage, which gives more & additional insight on the topic.

Why?
When using Effect Mapping, the most important question you should always use, is „Why?“. How is this related to the business goal? You’re business goal becomes the center of the (mind)map you create.
Another essential question is, how you want to measure the effect of what you’re gonna do?

Who?
Who can contribute to the business goal? And who can break it down into smaller chunks?

How?
How can they help us? How would this be useful?

Remark: So far no software features are involved, but only business ones!

What?
What can we as a team do? On software-level? On non-software-level?
What can we do on epic-level? How can we slice the epics down? What are the easiest things that I can solve?

You should use visualizing (as a mind map) to map user stories to business goals. You should measure the effect of your changes to verify the business assumptions you’ve made.
The goal is to find the shortest way to to hit the business goal! It is not to deliver all features!

Instead focussing on stakeholder activities, you should concentrate on functionalities.
And don’t breakdown, estimate or work on too early.

Some additional materials from gojko.net:

• a white paper
• a video with an experience report