Impact Mapping: What's Your Software Development Worth?

If you’ve ever been on a software project and wondered: “what’s the impact of the work I’m doing?”, impact mapping will help you immensely. Knowing what your code is worth, or any other assets we create on software projects across any discipline (UX, QA, Infrastructure, Operations etc.) is crucial to both getting the rewards you want, and steering the company in the right direction. In this episode I share how impact mapping can be used to identify a goal from a business model canvas (described in detail in my prior episode, link below) and map it to work team members do. With a better understanding of the impact of your work, you can communicate things like “why are we doing this?“, “what is this work going to enable?” and “how do we know when we’re successful?“. Impact mapping can be used not just with software development activities like programming and testing, but also with any activities, features, or tasks a team might consider to impact the business. Advertising, partnerships, cost reduction, and other aspects of a business also benefit from having a map of impacts. If your company hasn’t shared this information with you, have a conversation with your product manager or CEO to see if they can provide some insight to your work’s impact. An important point I highlight at the end of the episode, is to not budget only for a single experiment identified through an impact map. Most software development investments fail to fully realize their goals, so budgeting for multiple experiments will help. This way you won’t have to go back to the business for more money after a “failure”, and instead get multiple attempts to reach the goal through trying several things that have an impact. Join my Patreon:  https://thrivingtechnologist.com/patreon Learn about one-on-one career coaching with me: https://thrivingtechnologist.com/coaching TechRolepedia, a wiki about the top 25 roles in tech:  https://thrivingtechnologist.com/techroles The Thriving Technologist career guide:  https://thrivingtechnologist.com/guide You can also watch this episode on YouTube.  Visit me at thrivingtechnologist.com

Om Podcasten

If working on software teams feels complicated, frustrating, and filled with politics - that's just because your eyes are open. Unfortunately, you do need to make a living! So how do you keep up with the demands of your tech job and still have a life outside of work? Hi I'm Jayme Edwards, and I've had a 26 year career in the software industry filled with thrilling victories - and maddening drama. With so many problems in our industry, the more money I made the more ridiculous people's expectations were. I’m sharing the biggest mistakes I made in my career, and the insights I learned along the way. This podcast is the audio version of the Thriving Technologist YouTube channel, where you can find new episodes every Monday. Podcast versions appear on Wednesday of the same week. Subscribe and join us! Let’s help each other grow a community of healthy software developers.