/impact-analysis Skill

Analyze the impact of architectural changes on systems, integrations, and organizational outcomes.

When to Use This Skill

Use /impact-analysis when you need to understand consequences of changes:

• Assess impact of retiring a system
• Understand cascading failures if a system goes down
• Evaluate impact of technology upgrades
• Analyze organizational impacts (skills, processes, teams)
• Create risk mitigation plans for major changes

Usage

/impact-analysis <change-description> [scope] [options]

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Required
change-description	What is changing (e.g., "Retire Tableau")	Yes
scope	What to analyze (systems, people, process, financial, technical, all)	Optional
--depth	Analysis depth (quick, standard, comprehensive)	Optional
--format	Output format (markdown, spreadsheet, presentation)	Optional

Workflow

Phase 1: Define Change

User describes the change:

1. What is changing?

   • Retire a system
   • Upgrade technology
   • Replace tool
   • Migrate to cloud
   • Add new capability

2. Affected systems (optional - auto-detected if omitted)

   • Which systems involved?
   • Primary system(s) affected
   • Secondary dependencies

3. Timeline (optional)

   • When does change happen?
   • Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3?
   • Go-live date?

4. Scope of analysis (optional)

   • Systems impact (technical)
   • Integration impact (data flows)
   • People impact (teams, skills)
   • Process impact (workflows)
   • Financial impact (cost, ROI)
   • All of the above

Phase 2: Analyze Impacts

The skill:

1. Maps dependencies

   • Finds all systems that depend on changed system
   • Identifies integration points
   • Maps data flows

2. Calculates cascading effects

   • If system X goes down, what breaks?
   • What is recovery path?
   • How long until restoration?

3. Identifies organizational impacts

   • Which teams affected?
   • What skills required?
   • Who needs training?

4. Quantifies financial impacts

   • Cost of downtime (lost transactions, user productivity)
   • Cost of mitigation
   • Cost of training
   • Savings from change

5. Assesses risks

   • Technical risks (integration failures)
   • Organizational risks (skill gaps)
   • Financial risks (cost overruns)
   • Schedule risks (delays)

Phase 3: Generate Report

Creates comprehensive impact report with:

1. Impact Summary (1 page)

   • Change description
   • Primary impacts
   • Critical risks
   • Mitigation strategies

2. Detailed Impact Analysis

   • Systems impact
   • Integration impact
   • People/Organizational impact
   • Process impact
   • Financial impact

3. Dependency Visualization

   • Diagram showing affected systems
   • Data flow changes
   • Recovery paths

4. Contingency Planning

   • Failure scenarios
   • Mitigation for each
   • RTO/RPO targets

5. Implementation Checklist

   • Pre-implementation steps
   • Go-live steps
   • Post-implementation validation
   • Rollback procedures

Examples

Example 1: Impact of Retiring Tableau

/impact-analysis "Retire Tableau and migrate to Looker" --scope all

Prompts:

1. Change: "Retire Tableau dashboards"
2. Timeline: "Q1-Q3 2026 (3 phases)"
3. Scope: All (systems, people, process, financial)
4. Depth: Comprehensive

Output: Impact Analysis - Tableau Retirement.md containing:

Impact Summary:

• 100 dashboards to migrate
• 250 users to train
• 40 business processes affected
• Cost: £72K setup + training
• Benefit: £51K/year savings
• Risk: Medium (user adoption, timeline pressure)

Systems Impact:

• Snowflake: No technical change, increased query load
• DataPlatform: Minor changes to metadata for Looker integration
• Kong: New API endpoints for Looker access
• SAP: No change

Integration Impact:

• Snowflake → Looker (new direct connection, vs Tableau)
• Remove: Snowflake → Tableau connections
• User impact: Login flow changes (OAuth vs username/password)

People/Organizational Impact:

• Finance Team (50 users): Need Looker training (1 week)
• Operations Team (100 users): Need Looker training (3 days)
• Data Analytics Team (20 analysts): Deep Looker certification (2 weeks)
• Data Platform Team: 2 engineers for integration work

Process Impact:

• Dashboard creation: Different UI, some new capabilities
• Data refresh: Same schedule, different mechanism
• Access control: RBAC in Looker vs dataset-level in Tableau
• Monitoring: New alerting mechanisms

Financial Impact:

• Setup: £72K (migration, integration, training)
• Savings: £51K/year (Looker cheaper than Tableau)
• Hidden costs: Support, training materials
• 3-year break-even

Critical Risks:

1. User resistance to new tool

   • Mitigation: Early training, champion program
   • Contingency: Extended Tableau support (costs £20K)

2. Integration delays with Looker

   • Mitigation: Early testing, vendor support
   • Contingency: Temporary hybrid (Tableau + Looker)

3. Dashboard migration complexity

   • Mitigation: Phased migration (80% auto-migration possible)
   • Contingency: Rebuild vs migrate decision per dashboard

Dependency Diagram: Shows all 250 Tableau users and 100 dashboards, with:

• Criticality level (red = critical, orange = high, blue = medium)
• Migration complexity (simple, standard, complex)
• Dependencies on other systems (Snowflake, DataPlatform)

Example 2: Impact of SAP Upgrade

/impact-analysis "Upgrade SAP S/4HANA from 2020 to 2023" --scope technical,financial

Output: Technical + financial impact focusing on:

• System impact:

  • HANA database upgrade (performance improvement)
  • ABAP runtime updates
  • API changes (may require Kong policy updates)

• Integration impact:

  • Kafka event schema changes (potential breaking changes)
  • DataPlatform connector compatibility
  • Possible data enrichment changes

• Financial impact:

  • License cost changes
  • Performance improvement (reduced compute cost)
  • Implementation cost and effort
  • Risk mitigation cost

Example 3: Impact of AWS Region Migration

/impact-analysis "Migrate from eu-west-1 to eu-central-1" --scope systems,financial --depth quick

Output: Quick analysis showing:

• Systems affected: All AWS-hosted systems (SAP, DataPlatform, Kong, Kafka)
• Network changes: DX endpoint changes, VPN reconfiguration
• Cost impact: Potential cost changes by region
• Timeline: Minimal (can be quick with proper planning)
• Critical risks: DNS failover, temporary dual-region costs
• Rollback: Can return to eu-west-1 if needed

Impact Dimensions

1. System Impact

For each affected system:

• Availability impact

  • Downtime required (if any)
  • Failover impact
  • RTO/RPO changes

• Performance impact

  • Throughput changes
  • Latency changes
  • Scaling implications

• Integration impact

  • API changes
  • Data format changes
  • Connection requirement changes

• Data impact

  • Schema changes
  • Data migration required
  • Historical data impact

2. Integration Impact

For each affected integration:

• Breaking changes (yes/no)
• Compatibility (backward compatible? forward compatible?)
• Data flow changes (topology, format, latency)
• Error handling changes
• Monitoring changes

Typically creates a compatibility matrix:

Integration              Current             Post-Change      Compatible?
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
SAP → Kafka             CloudEvents schema   Extended schema  Backward OK
Kafka → DataPlatform            Avro + Kafka       Avro + Kafka      No change
DataPlatform → Snowflake        Parquet/S3         Snowflake Stream   Breaking

3. People/Organizational Impact

Analyzes:

• Team impact - Which teams affected?
• Skill gap - What new skills needed?
• Training needs - How many people, how long?
• Organizational change - New roles/reporting?
• Morale - Positive/negative perception?
• Staffing - New hires needed?

Creates org change impact summary:

Team              Impact    New Skills Required    Training Hours    Headcount
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Data Platform     High      Looker integration     40 hours          +1 engineer
Analytics         High      Looker dashboarding    24 hours          0
Finance           Medium    Looker UI/navigation  8 hours           0
Operations        Low       None (transparent)    0 hours           0

4. Process Impact

Analyzes:

• Workflow changes - How do processes change?
• Approval flows - Do approvals change?
• SLAs - Do SLAs change (latency, uptime)?
• Runbooks - Which operational procedures change?
• Escalation paths - Do escalation procedures change?

5. Financial Impact

Calculates:

• Implementation cost (one-time)

  • Development/integration effort
  • Training costs
  • Vendor implementation services

• Operational cost changes (recurring)

  • License cost increase/decrease
  • Infrastructure cost change
  • Support cost change
  • Staffing cost change

• Hidden costs

  • User productivity impact during transition
  • Support tickets/issues during cutover
  • System unavailability cost

• Benefits/savings

  • License savings
  • Performance improvements (reduced compute)
  • Productivity gains
  • Risk reduction

Creates financial impact summary:

Impact Category           Year 1        Year 2        Year 3
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Implementation Cost       -£72,000      £0            £0
License Savings           +£51,000      +£51,000      +£51,000
Infrastructure Savings    £0            +£10,000      +£10,000
Training/Support Cost     -£30,000      £0            £0
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Net Financial Impact      -£51,000      +£61,000      +£61,000
Cumulative 3-Year Impact                +£71,000

Impact Scoring

The skill calculates impact scores (0-10 scale):

• 0-2: Minimal impact (transparent change, no user action needed)
• 3-4: Low impact (minor adjustments needed)
• 5-6: Medium impact (moderate changes, some training needed)
• 7-8: High impact (significant changes, major training, process changes)
• 9-10: Critical impact (major organizational change, high risk)

For Example 1 (Tableau retirement): Impact Score: 7/10 (high impact)

• Requires 250 users to change tools
• Changes some workflows
• Moderate skill gap
• Medium cost impact
• But manageable with proper planning

Output Sections

Section 1: Executive Summary

Change: [Description]
Scope: [Systems, People, Process, Financial]
Impact Score: X/10 (Low/Medium/High/Critical)

Key Impacts:
1. [Primary impact with magnitude]
2. [Secondary impact with magnitude]
3. [Tertiary impact with magnitude]

Critical Risks:
1. [Risk 1 with mitigation]
2. [Risk 2 with mitigation]

Recommendation: [Proceed / Proceed with mitigation / Further evaluation / Do not proceed]

Section 2: Detailed Impact Analysis

Separate sections for:

• Systems impact (technical)
• Integration impact (data flows)
• Organizational impact (people, skills)
• Process impact (workflows)
• Financial impact (cost/benefit)

Section 3: Dependency Visualization

Diagram showing:

• All affected systems (colored by impact severity)
• Integration connections affected
• Data flows that change
• Teams/people affected

Section 4: Risk Assessment

For each risk:

• Description
• Probability (1-5)
• Impact (1-5)
• Mitigation strategy
• Contingency plan
• Owner

Section 5: Implementation Plan

• Pre-change checklist
• Change execution steps
• Validation criteria
• Post-change checklist
• Rollback procedure (if needed)

Section 6: Success Criteria

Measurable outcomes:

Success Criteria                          Target    Actual    Status
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
User adoption rate                        >90%      TBD
System uptime post-migration              99.9%     TBD
Dashboard load time                       <5 sec    TBD
Zero critical incidents in first 30 days  0 bugs    TBD
Training completion rate                  >95%      TBD

Options

Scope Options

/impact-analysis "change" --scope systems,people

Limit analysis to specific dimensions:

• systems - Technical systems impact
• integrations - Data flow and API impact
• people - Organizational and skill impact
• process - Business process impact
• financial - Cost and benefit impact
• all - All dimensions (default)

Depth Options

/impact-analysis "change" --depth comprehensive

• quick - 1-page summary, high-level impacts
• standard - Full analysis with key details
• comprehensive - Detailed analysis with all sensitivities

Include Contingencies

/impact-analysis "change" --contingencies yes

Generate detailed contingency and rollback plans.

Integration with Other Skills

The /impact-analysis skill works with:

• /scenario-compare - Compare impact of alternative scenarios
• /architecture-report - Include impact analysis in architecture docs
• /project - Create implementation project from impact analysis
• /risk-assessment - Detailed risk evaluation based on impacts

Output Example

From vault: [[Impact Analysis - Tableau Retirement]] (not yet created, would be generated by skill)

Next Steps

After impact analysis:

1. Review with stakeholders
2. Refine mitigation strategies based on feedback
3. Create detailed implementation project plan
4. Develop training curriculum
5. Establish success metrics and monitoring

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Invoke with: /impact-analysis <change-description>

Example: /impact-analysis "Retire Tableau and migrate to Looker" → Generates comprehensive impact analysis