# Lesson 2: The Heritage & Evolution

**From Effect Management to Trigger Mapping**

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## The Foundation: Effect Management

Trigger Mapping isn't a new trend. It's built on 20+ years of proven methodology.

The foundation is **Effect Management**, created by **Mijo Balic** and **Ingrid Domingues (Ottersten)** at **inUse** in Sweden. Their pioneering work on connecting business goals to user behavior through visual mapping - the **Effect Map** - revolutionized how we think about strategic software design.

This methodology gained wider recognition through Gojko Adzic's book **"Impact Mapping: Making a Big Impact with Software Products and Projects"** (2012), which acknowledges Effect Mapping as a key influence.

**Why this matters:** You're not learning an experimental approach. You're learning a battle-tested methodology that's guided strategic design for over two decades.

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## What is Effect Mapping?

Effect Mapping is the original model that connects business goals to user behavior through a visual map.

**The core structure:**
1. **Business Goals** - What the organization wants to achieve
2. **Actors** - Who can help achieve those goals (or prevent them)
3. **Impacts** - How actors' behavior changes
4. **Deliverables** - What features enable those behavior changes

**The key insight:** Software creates value through changing user behavior. If you understand whose behavior needs to change and how, you can design the right features.

**The visual format:** A mind-map style diagram radiating from business goals, showing the chain of reasoning from strategy to features.

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## Why WDS Modernized It: Trigger Mapping

Effect Mapping is brilliant, but WDS adapted it for modern projects with three key improvements:

### 1. Simplified for Longevity

**Original Effect Mapping:**
- Includes features/deliverables on the map itself
- Map becomes outdated as features change
- Requires constant updating

**WDS Trigger Mapping:**
- Removes features from the map
- Focuses only on strategic connections
- Map stays relevant even as features evolve
- Features are scored separately (Workshop 5)

**Why this matters:** Your Trigger Map becomes a long-term strategic document, not a feature list that needs constant maintenance.

### 2. Enhanced with Negative Psychology

**Original Effect Mapping:**
- Focuses primarily on positive impacts (what users want to achieve)
- Less emphasis on what users want to avoid

**WDS Trigger Mapping:**
- Explicitly maps **both** positive and negative driving forces
- Positive: What users want to achieve (goals, benefits, gains)
- Negative: What users want to avoid (fears, frustrations, pain)

**Why this matters:** Research shows people work harder to avoid pain than pursue gain (loss aversion). Negative drivers are often more powerful motivators than positive ones.

**Generic example:**
- **Positive driver:** "Want to stay organized"
- **Negative driver:** "Fear of missing important deadlines and looking unprofessional"
- **Which is stronger?** The fear of embarrassment drives more urgent action than the desire for organization.

### 3. Integrated Systematic Scoring

**Original Effect Mapping:**
- Prioritization happens through discussion
- Less formal scoring system

**WDS Trigger Mapping:**
- Workshop 5: Feature Impact Analysis
- Systematic scoring of features against prioritized drivers
- Quantified impact scores for data-driven decisions
- Clear ranking of features by strategic value

**Why this matters:** You get objective feature prioritization based on strategic impact, not opinions or politics.

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## The Three Strategic Layers

Both Effect Mapping and Trigger Mapping use three core layers. Understanding these is essential:

### Layer 1: Business Goals (Your WHY)

**What it is:**
- Vision that motivates the team
- SMART objectives that measure success

**Example:**
- Vision: "Make family dog care stress-free"
- Objective: "Achieve 10,000 active families by Q4"

**Why it matters:** Everything traces back to these goals. Every feature must support them.

### Layer 2: Target Groups (The WHO)

**The core question:**
WHO out there in the world will make sure, with their use of the product, that you achieve your goals?

**What it is:**
- Real people whose product usage drives your business success
- Specific user types from specific ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles)
- Not demographics - behavioral and contextual profiles
- Not abstract segments - actual humans in real situations

**Example:**
- Not: "Parents aged 30-45"
- Yes: "Busy working parents juggling multiple kids' schedules and family dog care"

**Why it matters:** Different groups have different psychological drivers. You can't design for everyone. The product must give more value than the pain of using it for these specific people.

### Layer 3: Usage Goals (Their WHY)

**What it is:**
- Positive drivers: What users want to achieve
- Negative drivers: What users want to avoid

**Example:**
- Positive: "Want to ensure dog is well cared for"
- Negative: "Fear of family conflict over forgotten responsibilities"

**Why it matters:** This is the psychology that drives behavior. Design must address both sides.

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## The Core Insight: Flow of Value

Here's the fundamental principle behind both methodologies:

**Any software is about flow of value.**

There's always a group of people (WHO) out there in the world who, through their use of the software in the intended way, make your success happen.

**The critical chain:**
1. **WHO** - Specific people from specific ICPs
2. **Out there in the world** - Real people whose lives your product touches
3. **Will make sure** - Product must be used, and used in the intended way
4. **With their use of the product** - Product must give more value than pain of using it
5. **That you achieve your goals** - Their usage must connect to measurable business objectives

These users have their own goals:
- **GAIN** - Benefits and positive outcomes they achieve
- **PAIN** - Resistance and friction they experience

**The key equation:** Make GAIN > PAIN for users, so through their usage, they add value to your system.

**Generic example:**
- **Your goal:** Increase subscription revenue
- **WHO:** Freelancers managing multiple clients (real people out there)
- **Their gain:** Organized project tracking, professional client communication
- **Their pain:** Learning curve, monthly cost, data migration
- **Your job:** Make gain significantly outweigh pain (value > usage pain)
- **Their usage:** They subscribe and use it for client management (intended way)
- **Result:** Through their usage, you hit revenue goals

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## How Prioritization Works

When all three layers are prioritized, you have perfect guidance for design:

**The prioritization cascade:**
1. Which business goal matters most right now?
2. Which target group can best help achieve that goal?
3. Which of their psychological drivers are strongest?
4. Which features best address those drivers?

**Generic example:**
- **Top goal:** Increase user retention
- **Top group:** Power users (high engagement, at risk of churn)
- **Top driver (negative):** Fear of losing their data/work if they switch
- **Top feature:** Advanced export and backup capabilities
- **Why:** Addresses their fear, increases switching cost, improves retention

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## Why This Approach Works

**It's traceable:**
- Every feature connects to a psychological driver
- Every driver connects to a target group
- Every group connects to a business goal
- No orphaned features, no guesswork

**It's visual:**
- One-page map everyone can understand
- Stakeholders see the strategic connections
- Designers reference it for every decision
- Developers understand the "why"

**It's flexible:**
- Business goals change? Update the map
- New user insights? Add to the map
- Features evolve? Map stays relevant
- Living strategic document

**It's proven:**
- 20+ years of successful projects
- Used by organizations worldwide
- Adapted and refined over time
- Battle-tested methodology

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## Three Approaches: Choose Your Path

WDS offers three ways to apply Trigger Mapping methodology, depending on your situation:

### 1. Full Trigger Mapping (Starting from Scratch)

**What it is:**
- Complete 5-workshop process
- Deep psychological mapping
- Systematic feature scoring
- Comprehensive strategic foundation

**When to use:**
- Major product initiatives
- No existing documentation
- Complex user psychology
- Multiple target groups
- Long-term strategic planning
- When you need defensible prioritization

**Time investment:** 60-90 minutes  
**Output:** Complete Trigger Map + scored feature list  
**Tutorial:** [Tutorial 05: Create Your Trigger Map](tutorial-05.md)

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### 2. Value Trigger Chain (Quick Validation)

**What it is:**
- Streamlined single-workshop approach
- Focus on one primary user journey
- Quick strategic validation
- Essential connections only

**When to use:**
- Smaller features or iterations
- Single user journey focus
- Quick strategic check
- Early-stage validation
- Time-constrained situations

**Time investment:** 15-20 minutes  
**Output:** Single-chain map from goal to trigger  
**Tutorial:** [Tutorial 05B: Create Your Value Trigger Chain](tutorial-05b-value-trigger-chain.md)

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### 3. Documentation Synthesis (Existing Research)

**What it is:**
- Extract strategic elements from existing docs
- Organize research into actionable Trigger Map
- Identify gaps and validate assumptions
- Transform hundreds of pages into single-slide reference

**When to use:**
- You have extensive vision/strategy documents
- User research or interview transcripts exist
- Project plans or roadmaps already created
- Need to make existing documentation actionable
- Documentation is too long for anyone to read

**Time investment:** 30-45 minutes  
**Output:** Synthesized Trigger Map + gap analysis  
**Tutorial:** [Tutorial 05C: Synthesize from Documentation](tutorial-05c-documentation-synthesis.md)

**The problem this solves:**
Organizations spend thousands on research that sits unused. 200-page reports nobody reads. Interview transcripts gathering dust. This approach transforms that investment into a single-slide strategic artifact you can actually use in daily design work and AI chats.

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### Which Should You Use?

**Use Full Trigger Mapping if:**
- Starting from scratch with no documentation
- Major product or feature initiative
- Multiple user groups to consider
- Need to prioritize among many features
- Stakeholders need strategic justification
- Building long-term product strategy

**Use Value Trigger Chain if:**
- Iterating on existing features
- One clear user journey to validate
- Need quick strategic check
- Early exploration phase
- Time is very limited (under 20 minutes)

**Use Documentation Synthesis if:**
- You have vision docs, user research, or plans
- Documentation exists but isn't being used
- Need to cut through extensive research
- Want to validate strategic alignment
- Need actionable artifact from existing investment

**Pro tip:** Learn Full Trigger Mapping first (this module). Once you understand the complete process, you'll know when to use the lightweight version or documentation synthesis.

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## The WDS Advantage

By modernizing Effect Mapping into Trigger Mapping, WDS gives you:

✅ **Proven methodology** - 20+ years of heritage, not experimental  
✅ **Longer shelf life** - Map stays relevant as features evolve  
✅ **Deeper psychology** - Both positive and negative drivers  
✅ **Systematic scoring** - Data-driven feature prioritization  
✅ **Three flexible approaches** - Full, lightweight, or synthesis from docs  
✅ **AI-guided process** - Saga facilitates all workshops  
✅ **Integrated workflow** - Lives in your IDE with your code

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## What You'll Learn Next

Now that you understand the foundation and evolution, the next lesson walks through the 5 workshops step by step:

1. Business Goals
2. Target Groups
3. Driving Forces
4. Prioritization
5. Feature Impact

You'll see exactly how to create your Trigger Map.

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## Key Takeaways

✅ **Effect Management is the foundation** - Created by Mijo Balic and Ingrid Domingues at inUse, Sweden  
✅ **20+ years of proven results** - Not a trend, a battle-tested methodology  
✅ **WDS modernized it** - Simplified map, added negative drivers, integrated scoring  
✅ **Three strategic layers** - Business Goals → Target Groups → Usage Goals  
✅ **Core insight** - Make user GAIN > PAIN, they drive your success  
✅ **Traceable reasoning** - Every feature connects back to business goals

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## Further Reading

**Books:**
- [Impact Mapping by Gojko Adzic](https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Mapping-Software-Products-Projects/dp/0955683645) - Building on Effect Mapping concepts

**Online:**
- [impactmapping.org](https://www.impactmapping.org) - Resources and community

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[← Back to Lesson 1](lesson-01-missing-link.md) | [Next: Lesson 3 - The Five Workshops →](lesson-03-five-workshops.md)

*Part of Module 05: Trigger Mapping*
