A lot goes into creating a strategy - market data, competitor information, current performance evaluation, vision, mission, values and on and on. The creator of Wardley Maps, Simon Wardley, argues we need a map, not a SWOT. Maps help us with situational awareness so we can see movement in the future and maps are important in deciding on actions. Kim Ballestrin of elabor8, put together this presentation to run product peeps through the concept of Wardley Mapping, how to use it for decision making and some examples of how others have used this type of mapping.

1. The What and Why of Wardley Mapping

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Strategy – Tactics - Operations
What to keep in-house
Outsourcing
Decommissioning
Extending – adding new features
Update – modernise
Decisions

3. Senior Leader ‘We need to commoditise ‘X’
Teams ‘But we have a very specific need’
Both can be right
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How would we find that out?

4. Wardley Mapping was created by Simon
Wardley and is IP protected under Creative
Commons 3.0 Share Alike
More details about attribution can be found on Simon’s blog site
https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/01/how-to-refer-to-mapping.html
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Why should we create a Wardley Map?
Just like an ordinary map, a Wardley map helps us
to know where we are now and make good
decisions about where to go to next
It is a way of visualising the systems, functions and
features that support our Customer or user needs

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How to create a Wardley Map?
Place the need at the top of the map
Place the functions and features that support that need underneath the need
from most visible to the Customer/user at the top (e.g. website) to least visible
to the Customer/user at the bottom (e.g. Oracle Database)
Identify a user or Customer need
Keep these simple and small scale – better to create multiple maps than one
great big map

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How to Create a Wardley Map
Buy a Book
List of books
Shop
Computer terminal in Shop
Display List
Website
Visibility
• Identify a Customer or User Need
• Add the features/functions supporting that need

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How to create a Wardley Map?
• Genesis at the very left (for items that no-one has built before
and you need to create)
• Custom built – (others have built it, but it needs to be
customised to suit your needs)
• Product or rental (you can use it as it comes)
• Commodity/Utility (it is ubiquitous and standardised – such as
electricity)
Spread out the functions and features from left to right across the
map (4 major stages)

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How to Create a Wardley Map
Buy a Book
List of books
Shop
Computer terminal in Shop
Display List
Website
Visibility
Genesis Custom Product Commodity
Customer Device in Shop
Internet
Interface to ISBN System
Website Host

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Start Your Own Wardley Map
Choose a social media platform that most of your group are
familiar with – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc…
Start with the need to capture and protect personal data – put this
at the top
Populate underneath with the features and functions that could be
used to capture and manage personal data – most visible at the top
and least visible at the bottom
• No more than 10 items

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Start Your Own Wardley Map
Spread the items out from left to right
Genesis Custom Product Commodity
Add in more items if it makes sense – no more than 15 in total
Draw the lines linking the items together

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Outcomes from Wardley Mapping
For example
• Are we handcrafting software that everyone else buys ‘off the
shelf’ – like a CRM system
• Have we outsourced something that should be brought back in-
house? Such as specialised configuration to support research
needs (the overhead to manage contracts/vendors could be
significant)
Once we have a map of the current state, have a good look at it and
see if that makes sense for the future.

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Making Decisions
Buy a Book
List of books
Shop
Computer terminal in Shop
Display List
Website
Visibility
Genesis Custom Product Commodity
Customer Device in Shop
Internet
Interface to ISBN System
Website Host
Replace Manual List with
Automated Inventory
Management

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Which Items Require Decisions?
Going from top to bottom of the Wardley Map
• Note which items require decision/s to be made
• Note the decision/s to make
• Note any assumptions about either the decision or the item itself
Item Decision
Y/N
Decision/s to be made Assumptions
Y/N
Assumption/s description

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Some Other Ways to use Wardley Maps
The whole landscape – what are our competitors doing?
Processes (from no standard process to highly standardised
processes) – and value chains
Maturity Mapping – Great idea and blog post by Chris McDermott
https://medium.com/@chrisvmcd/mapping-maturity-create-context-specific-maturity-models-with-wardley-
maps-informed-by-cynefin-37ffcd1d315
Many more – Simon is keen for people to apply, adapt and innovate
with Wardley Mapping

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Potential Pitfalls
Trying to draw the perfect Wardley Map
Mapping the whole thing
Different levels of granularity
Not using Wardley Mapping (and therefore not having sufficient
situational awareness for good decision-making)

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More Information
Simon is publishing his book at this site – a great amount of useful
information
https://medium.com/wardleymaps
Keynote recordings from conferences – this one was at Lean Agile
Scotland
https://vimeo.com/189984496
Keep your eyes open for ‘Map Camps’ – conferences focused on
Wardley Mapping (or start one)