Wardley Mapping for Strategy
Why Wardley Maps?
Simon Wardley (you can find his book on Medium) has created a visual model called Wardley Maps to map a state or situation and add movements and other information to it in order to build a model of what you see and what might happen.
Material - Mapping area, physical or digital. Post-its and pens.
Time - 60-120 min
Invited - Core team + facilitator
What is a Wardley Map
Wardley mappning example
On the X-axis you see how things mature over time. The stages are
Genesis (this is where you explore new ideas and solve problems no one done before)
Custom built (services you create yourself since there are no products for you to use based on your needs)
Product or rental (things you can buy which build parts of your solution)
Commodity or Utility (this is something you just use, like cloud platforms and electricity).
On the Y-axis you visualise things from the User's perspective, with what is more visible higher up. You can chose what you think is relevant as a parameter for the X-axis and taylor it as you like. It’s also likely that you need several maps and perspectives as you try to get different views of your problem.
Mapping
Prepare
Define the problem you want to analyse
Define the values on the X and Y axis
Gather data that is relevant and share with the invited group to read up on before the workshop
Run
Check in
Present the problem and the format
Brainstorm quiet an individually for data points to be mapped (5 min)
Map out all data point, remove duplicates (don't spend time arguing and agree on where the data points should go in this step, we are just getting the data visible)
Current state: Discuss and agree on what state things are (mote up/down and right/left) and how they depend on each others (add lines as connections between data points)
Tip: start from the User perspective at the top and build your tree from there.
Movements: Discuss and mark movements in the map. What is going to a transition/mature, what trends do you see or foresee. Mark this with arrows from current state to a possible future state
Analyse and discuss actions to take based on the map you have created
Outcome
Maps visualising your understanding of the problem
Movements from current to future positions
Actions for your team to take
Example from Simon Wardley
