Evolutionary Characteristics How evolved is the component?
Don’t worry if some of the terms are confusing... just use what you can. Like Chess, mapping is a craft and you will get better with practice.
Wardley Maps give you a visual method for talking about and developing strategy.
Wardley Mapping is all about context — increasing situational awareness. It gives you a visual way to represent your value chain in relation to the evolution of each component (see below).
Wardley Mapping is named for its creator, Simon Wardley, who has written a book on mapping that is freely available. You can find other resources and tools for mapping here.
If it's significant enough to dedicate your time to, consider mapping it.
A component may be an Activity, a Practice, Data, or Knowledge.
For example, a Cup of Tea could be a component. It might need additional underlying components such as Tea and Hot Water. In your organization, a component might be something like a Web Site, a Purchasing Order, Adjudication, or Feedback Collection.
All components evolve from left to right under the influence of supply and demand competition.
| Stage of Evolution | I |
II |
III |
IV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
GenesisUnique, rare, uncertain, constantly changing, newly-discovered. The focus is on exploring. |
CustomUncommon, frequently-changing, requires artisanal skill, no two are the same. The focus is on learning and developing the craft |
Product (and rental)Increasingly common, more defined, better understood. Repeatable processes. Change is slower. Initial differentiation but increasing stability and sameness. There are often many of the same kind of product. The focus is on refining and improving. |
Commodity (and utility)Scale and volume operations of production. Highly standardized. Defined. Fixed. Undifferentiated. Fit for a specific known purpose. Repetition, repetition, repetition... With time, it becomes commonplace and less visible. The focus is on ruthlessly removing deviation, industrialising, and increasing operational efficiency. |
|
As components evolve, their characteristics change.
I |
II |
III |
IV |
|---|---|---|---|
Genesis |
Custom |
Product (+rental) |
Commodity (+utility) |
| Uncharted | Industrialised | ||
| Chaotic | Ordered | ||
| Uncertain | Known | ||
| Unpredictable | Measured | ||
| Changing | Stable | ||
| Different | Standard | ||
| Exciting | Obvious | ||
| Future Worth | Low Margin | ||
| Unusual | Essential | ||
| Rare | Ubiquitous | ||
| Poorly Understood | Defined | ||
| Experimentation | Volume Operations | ||
| Differential | Operational Efficiency | ||
| Competitive Advantage | Cost of Doing Business | ||
How evolved is the component?
Select cells to highlight them as you think, discuss, and challenge assumptions.
| Stage of Evolution | I |
II |
III |
IV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Genesis |
Custom |
Product (+rental) |
Commodity (+utility) |
|
| Ubiquity | Rare | Slowly increasing consumption | Rapidly increasing consumption | Widespread and stabilising |
| Certainty | Poorly understood | Rapid increases in learning | Rapid increases in use / fit for purpose | Commonly understood (in terms of use) |
| Market | Undefined market | Forming market | Growing market | Mature market |
| User perception | Different / confusing / exciting / surprising | Leading edge / emerging | Common / disappointed if not used or available | Standard / expected |
| Failure | High / tolerated / assumed | Moderate / unsurprising but disappointed | Not tolerated, focus on constant improvement | Operational efficiency and surprised by failure |
How evolved is the component?
Select cells to highlight them as you think, discuss, and challenge assumptions.
| Stage of Evolution | I |
II |
III |
IV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Genesis |
Custom |
Product (+rental) |
Commodity (+utility) |
|
| Characteristics | ||||
| Ubiquity | Rare | Slowly increasing consumption | Rapidly increasing consumption | Widespread and stabilising |
| Certainty | Poorly understood | Rapid increases in learning | Rapid increases in use / fit for purpose | Commonly understood (in terms of use) |
| Publication Types | Normally describe the wonder of the thing | Build / construct / awareness and learning | Maintenance / operations / installation / features | Focused on use |
| General Properties | ||||
| Market | Undefined market | Forming market | Growing market | Mature market |
| Knowledge management | Uncertain | Learning on use | Learning on operation | Known / accepted |
| Market perception | Chaotic (non-linear) | Domain of experts | Increasing expectations of use | Ordered (appearance of being linear) / trivial |
| User perception | Different / confusing / exciting / surprising | Leading edge / emerging | Common / disappointed if not used or available | Standard / expected |
| Perception in industry | Competitive advantage / unpredictable / unknown | Competitive advantage / ROI / case examples | Advantage through implementation / features | Cost of doing business / accepted |
| Focus of value | High future worth | Seeking profit / ROI? | High profitability | High volume / reducing margin |
| Understanding | Poorly understood / unpredictable | Increasing understanding / development of measures | Increasing education / constant refinement of needs / measures | Believed to be well defined / stable / measurable |
| Comparison | Constantly changing / a differential / unstable | Learning from others / testing the water / some evidential support | Feature difference | Essential / operational advantage |
| Failure | High / tolerated / assumed | Moderate / unsurprising but disappointed | Not tolerated, focus on constant improvement | Operational efficiency and surprised by failure |
| Market action | Gambling / driven by gut | Exploring a "found" value | Market analysis / listening to customers | Metric driven / build what is needed |
| Efficiency | Reducing the cost of change (experimentation) | Reducing cost of waste (Learning) | Reducing cost of waste (Learning) | Reducing cost of deviation (Volume) |
| Decision drivers | Heritage / culture | Analysis & synthesis | Analysis & synthesis | Previous experience |
What doctrine does your organization make use of?
Select cells to highlight them as you think, discuss, and challenge assumptions. In this section, you can click multiple times to progress through colors indicating a neutral, weak, warning, and good status.
Inspired by this tweetstorm by Simon Wardley.
| Category | Wardley's Doctrine (universally useful patterns that a user can apply regardless of context) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communication | Be transparent (a bias towards open) | Focus on high situational awareness (understand what is being considered) | Use a common language (necessary for collaboration) | Challenge assumptions (speak up and question) |
| Development | Know your users (e.g. customers, shareholders, regulators, staff) | Focus on user needs | Think fast, inexpensive, restrained, and elegant (FIRE, formerly FIST) | Remove bias and duplication |
| Use appropriate methods (e.g. agile vs lean vs six sigma) | Focus on the outcome not a contract (e.g. worth based development) | Be pragmatic (it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice) | Use standards where appropriate | |
| Use appropriate tools (e.g. mapping, financial models) | ||||
| Operation | Manage inertia (e.g. existing practices, political capital, previous investment) | Optimise flow (remove bottlenecks) | Think small (as in know the details) | Effectiveness over efficiency |
| Do better with less (continual improvement) | Set exceptional standards (great is just not good enough) | Manage failure | ||
| Structure | Provide purpose, mastery, & autonomy | Think small (as in teams, "two pizza") | Distribute power and decision making | Think aptitude and attitude |
| Design for constant evolution | There is no one culture (e.g. pioneers, settlers and town planners) | Seek the best | ||
| Learning | Use a systematic mechanism of learning (a bias towards data) | A bias towards action (learn by playing the game) | A bias towards the new (be curious, take appropriate risks) | Listen to your ecosystems (acts as future sensing engines) |
| Leading | Be the owner (take responsibility) | Move fast (an imperfect plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed tomorrow) | Think big (inspire others, provide direction) | Strategy is iterative not linear (fast reactive cycles) |
| Strategy is complex (there will be uncertainty) | Commit to the direction, be adaptive along the path (crossing the river by feeling the stones) | There is no core (everything is transient) | Be humble (listen, be selfless, have fortitude) | |
| Exploit the landscape | ||||
This work is adapted from Finding a Path by Simon Wardley, and thereby licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0.
