AgentSkillsCN

Impact Analysis

影响分析

SKILL.md

/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

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

Parameters

ParameterDescriptionRequired
change-descriptionWhat is changing (e.g., "Retire Tableau")Yes
scopeWhat to analyze (systems, people, process, financial, technical, all)Optional
--depthAnalysis depth (quick, standard, comprehensive)Optional
--formatOutput 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

code
/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

code
/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

code
/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:

code
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:

code
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:

code
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

code
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:

code
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

code
/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

code
/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

code
/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

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

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