It’s been 9 years since I started to learn Wardley Mapping.

If you’ve followed me since the beginning, then you know I love to share about changes in the practice. (And plenty has changed!)

But every once in a while I like to share what’s happening with the tools, too.

My first ever post about Wardley Mapping tools was in 2017, and at the beginning I mused about a paradox:

• On the one hand, the tools matter! They can make things easier, shorten the learning curve, and make you more effective.
  
• On the other hand, the tools don’t matter at all! After all, you just need pencil and paper, right?

As you read this post, I hope you can keep in mind the spirit of that paradox as I propose these top 5 Wardley Mapping tools.

What’s out there?

First, a disclaimer: This post is based entirely on my opinion. There is no data to back it up, other than experiences I’ve accumulated over the years. Disagreement is welcome and encouraged — competing analyses, doubly so!

A lot has happened since that 2017 tools post, which I wrote very shortly after the first Map Camp. Now I keep a running list of all the Wardley Mapping tools I’ve heard of here.

These are all half-decent for Wardley Mapping, if a bit high-friction.

What really makes them a strong option, however, is their ubiquity in the workplace. Regardless of corporate firewalls, policies, or limitations on vendors, one of these options will probably be available. As a bonus, most people seem to understand how they work.

To Wardley Map in this software, you add text boxes or other shapes and then connect them with lines. You can use templates like those linked above, or you can create your own Wardley Mapping backdrop in a matter of minutes (bonus if you edit the slide master / themes to do it).

To Wardley Map in these tools, you simply start place sticky notes or text boxes on the workspace and then connect them together with the line tool. You might drop in a Wardley Map template image (like this one), or even construct your own.

Created by Damon Skelhorn, OnlineWardleyMaps is a fabulous, code-centered tool, purpose-built for Wardley Mapping.

It’s great for software developers, data scientists, or anyone who prefers Maps-as-Code.

In this way of mapping, you write a text file to define the map and then that code renders to an image.

Especially important is the fact that this method of making Wardley Maps is available as an extension for VSCode, a popular development tool.

Plus it’s all free, which makes it extremely accessible.

I highly recommend this option for those working in technical domains who are comfortable with writing code, and Damon has done an excellent job making this readily-available to us all.

#2 Most Accessible: Pen and Paper

Any list of tools would be incomplete without this tried-and-true method of Wardley Mapping.

Pencil, pen, paper, dry-erase board, whatever. It’s a classic, and it’s here to stay.

Simon Wardley initially described mapping as something you can do on the back of a napkin, and that’s still true. A quick sketch is sometimes all you need (and it needn’t be pretty).

I sometimes recommend pencil and paper to beginners, so they don’t get distracted by the tools. It also forces them to dig into the theory with a bit of rote practice (“How do I draw that thing again?”). Of course, that’s not always appropriate, but it keeps the tools from being the barrier to practice.

Pencil and paper is also great if you’re in-person with a colleague, or if you just need to do some quiet thinking on your own. Just you and your sketchbook (or whiteboard).

By the way, if you like using a whiteboard, I recommend picking up some dry-erase magnets. (You can thank me later.)

When in doubt, pencil and paper it out! Tools can get in the way of mapping, so stick to the basics if you can. (And if you don’t like having to draw and redraw your wardley map axes and labels over and over, we have a printable template here you might find useful.)

Created by Tristan Slominski, Mapkeep is a real-time collaborative tool like Miro, but focused just on Wardley Mapping.

Although I was slow to adopt, I’m finding that I’m reaching for Mapkeep more and more, especially when the other tools have too much friction or get in the way of my thinking.

Speaking of friction, Mapkeep is near-frictionless for Wardley Mapping. It just works! The tool really gets out of your way, and just lets you map.

To say the least, my initial caution about adopting Mapkeep for personal use has been overcome by how good it feels to map with it. When I’m using Mapkeep, I spend all my time thinking, rather than fiddling with the tool.

Of course you may find the occasional rough edge or two, but Tristan keeps pushing feature after feature that only makes it easier to use and more powerful.

In November I wrote about What are the concrete uses of Wardley Maps for a CIO?

At the end I asked readers for a favor: answer a poll of 3 questions.

20 of the readers took their time to do it, so thank you!

1.- Main use of Wardley Mapping

I’m not surprised with the fact that the main use is solo-mapping. It takes a lot of time to gain a good level of mapping and it’s also useful when using for it’s “own-business”, so why not?

2.- Do you think about concrete uses of Wardley Mapping in specific contexts? as in the context of the CIO for instance.

Here I love the 15% answering “maybe”

3.- What is the major challenge you find when using Wardley Maps?

This was an opened question with 20 different answers. Some of them deserves some comments.

• I will add the answer highlighted and some comments.
• There are 20, so I will add them in the same order of appearance.
• The repeated ones will be consolidated, for instance: “(3 times)”

1.- Finding people to map with

I understand the issue. It’s difficult to find people that have interest on mapping, with similar level and on the same context.

2.-Imposter syndrome

3.- find the edges to concepts/things. Then finding out that other people see the edges in a different way. But this is also a strength as it allows people to tell stories or gain understanding.

This hard work goes in the benefit of common understanding and it’s one of the most valuable things you can obtain when discussing around a map.

Is easy? no, but it’s worthy.

4.- Engaging other who are not familiar or experienced in ‘doing’ mapping

Yep, this is an issue, you are an early adopter and this means you are probably the only mapper in your circle. And this takes personal time to show how the maps work.

Sharing knowledge is always much appreciated by others and it’s a great way to learn how people read maps.

5.- Try to not use the label. be simple

That’s the “tabú game”, very useful to play that game. People will not know where this come from and they will be focused on the business topic you are discussing.

6.- Cognitive overhead

7.- Buy in from others

If you refer to buy in of Wardley Maps, then my comment is: the best way to obtain buy in from others about Wardley maps is to be success. When you are successful, people will start to ask themselves why you are successful, sooner or later they will find you work using Wardley Maps and they will gain real interest for the maps.

Do not spend time selling the maps, it’s not worthy.

8.- Everybody seems to think Wardley maps are cool, but don’t seem to know what to do with them. As you say – how to apply them to concrete use cases.

This is mainly due to the fact that Wardley Mapping is an emergent practice and we all have to find ways to use it and find it ways. There’s still not enough amount of identified use cases to enable new mappers to show how others do.

The fact that every context is different makes things harder, so individual tips or uses fits better for the majority.

9.- Getting folks to agree that the work required to do it well is worthwhile.

That’s part of the conversation, and get agreement is not easy work.

10.- Onboarding new people to share the chain of thought of why I’m thinking of X decision over Y decision

Yes, this part is tough, but imagine not having the visual support of a map

11.- Following the value chain to a tangible point that can be communicated to others as part of a strategy.

I differentiate between:

• working-maps: maps build to work on them.
• communication-maps: maps build to communicate to people that are not present in the working conversation

To turn a working-map into a communications-map take a lot of time and it’s worthy to show first to a couple of people to understand how they read the message you want to give.

Some tips about the communications-map:

• have no more than 10 components.
• have clear messages around the map: add story-telling, you are using the tool as communications tool. Build a story around the map.
• Add definitions and text references of the concepts when required
• Ask for feedback before to show to an extended audience.

12.- I can see the practical benefit using Wardley Maps has on strategy, prioritization, building and investing in systems. But I don’t hold a position of influence to advance it’s use. In cases where I have had an opportunity to use it, other folks have not been receptive to thinking strategically, only saying that they do.

You are not in a position of influence today, but you are nurturing a skill that with the rest of your background and other abilities will drive you towards other places.

There are some skills that are universal (communications, finance, strategy…).

I understand the difficulty, but I guess you are doing a long-term investment, and sooner or later it will payback.

13.- finding a tool that is easy to use and approved by my employer

In my case, I use MS-PowerPoint (typically accepted in many companies) or you can use diagrams.net (you can store in private space and it’s a standard which works with a web navigator).

This site has also a tools page: https://learnwardleymapping.com/tools/

14.- I am still learning Wardley Maps. Other challenges include trying to change how planning is done in my organization.

I have been there, just take into account that you are fighting with “the way the things are done here”, which is very close to the culture of an organization. To change these type of things is really tough.

I would take a different approach. There are 2 types of strategies:

• Deliberate strategy: planned and formal one.
• Emergent strategy: decisions that merge from unexpected situations that are not gathered in the formal strategy.

My approach it would be to combine the best of the 2 worlds, complement the formal planning with the use of Wardley Mapping. Do not fight with the stablished status-quo, but complement and make it more competent and valuable with the support of your industry/company knowledge and the use of Wardley Maps.

15.- Finding time to use and colleagues to appreciate the effort when it is not yet a SWOT analysis level of ubiquity!

As commented before, the best way to get attention from others about Wardley Maps is to be successful using it.

16.- Learning enough about it to be able to communicate it’s value to team members and stakeholders alike.

That shows where in your learning process you are. My approach is simple but difficult: practice, practice, practice.

17.- Regular people don’t understand or care about them. There seems to be a certain type of person who gets it, but these are the vast minority of people that I’m aware of. The storytelling approach is such a powerful force to overcome. I work in an industry that relies on both the storytelling plus data approach which is becoming even more of a powerful force. Perhaps WM needs to invest in branding and marketing? See, how it’s easy to drop back to the gut feel and story approach! Even business leaders who have the capability to understand them don’t seem to be attracted to the concept. How do we convince others? There is enough material in the public domain now, organic growth has stalled, investment in the right areas is now needed.

What I see is the following situation. You are an early adopter that see the potential value of Wardley Mapping, and you are surrounded of early majority and late majority people.

These different attitudes define how each people buy-in something.

• Early adopters: have curiosity, expose themselves to the new…
• Early majority: require evidences that the thing works, make decisions on proven facts.
• Late majority: follow the trend.

Right now Wardley Mapping is an emergent practice, it’s accepted by early adopters, and the people in this business we are trying to cross the chasm towards next stage.

The fact that you are trying it, makes you part of the group of people crossing the chasm with Wardley Mapping. Just be aware of that situation and expose yourself with awareness.

So again, the best way to get attention from others about Wardley Maps is to be successful using it.

18.- Disproportionate amount of thinking needed to understand where something belongs on the map.

19.- Just doing it!

20.- building digital products to augment physical products

This is a tough use, good luck!

Takeaways

Thanks again to those who invested some time to answer, too much appreciated.

Continue practicing, continue sharing maps wherever you can, and remember there’s more than the map (climatic patterns, doctrines…), cultivating strategic thinking is not a waste of time.

Yes, literally I use Wardley Maps to find answers that I do not have and Gen-AI is still not ready, and during the last few weeks, I’ve been looking for concrete answers to a specific question:

What are the concrete uses of Wardley Maps for a CIO?

What are the concrete uses of Wardley Maps for specific roles?

I have some hypotheses, but I’m trying to understand how real or unreal they are.

Before we begin, and with the purpose of providing more context, I would like to explain my particular view about how Wardley Mapping is seen by companies now at the end of 2023.

My view:

• Companies use strategic approaches that are established in the industry, where the main source of practice is strategic planning frameworks (red ocean).
• Suddenly some individuals (*) of these companies discover Wardley Mapping and they find it useful. They start using it by themselves and few of them start to use it with others.
• Wardley Mapping as an emergent practice is difficult to use: there is not enough information to determine some patterns about how people use it, and this makes adoption more difficult.
• Wardley mapping still has to navigate through the blue ocean till find the ways the companies are open to use it and find space into the competitive landscape of strategy.

Here, I have some questions for the reader.

• What is your view of the use of Wardley Maps in companies?
• How do you see the challenge of introducing the use of Wardley Mapping in your professional space?

This high level view is important as I will zoom into a concrete role that companies have, and it’s important to understand the challenges that a CIO has when using Wardley Mapping in a context where its CxO peers uses other tools.

So let’s come back to the CIO. So here is my hypothesis.

What are the main duties and challenges of a CIO?

Well, the main advisory firms have given me a good bunch of answers about this and I have summarized these 5 duties and challenges.

What are the main duties and challenges of a CIO?

Well, main advisory firms have giving me a good bunch of answers about this and I have summarized on these 5 duties and challenges.

Some of the challenges are present every single year, and some others change the adjective; for instance “Digital” may turn into “metaverse” or “AI”… trends.

My question then is, what are the main uses of Wardley Mapping CIOs can do? The classic answers are:

• Use as a visual tool for discovering the competitive landscape.
• Think about the situation they have and figure out what choices can be feasible in that context.
• Use it as a communication tool for sharing thoughts with the team.

I have heard these answers many times, and this time I am not happy with them, that’s the reason I have tried to go beyond with this theoretical exercise.

To do it I have taken the CIO challenges as reference to organize and focus the concrete answers.

Digital Transformation & Legacy Systems

1. Visualize Current State: Map out existing technology infrastructure, highlighting where legacy systems exist.
2. Identify Evolution: Determine the maturity and evolution stage of each component, helping to pinpoint which systems are ripe for transformation.
3. Highlight Dependencies: Understand how various systems interact and rely on each other, essential when planning migrations or integrations.
4. Prioritize Efforts: Determine which areas of the map (and thus which systems) are most critical to business operations and should be addressed first.
5. Guide Strategic Decision-making: By understanding the landscape and its evolution, CIOs can make informed decisions about where to invest in new technologies and when to retire or replace legacy systems.

Aligning IT with Business Strategy

1. Value Chain Analysis: Visualize the flow of value across the organization, helping to identify where IT can enhance or enable core business activities.
2. Spotting Strategic Opportunities: Identify areas in the technology landscape that are evolving or undergoing a shift, allowing for proactive strategic moves.
3. Stakeholder Alignment: By visualizing the strategic landscape, discussions with other business leaders become more tangible, facilitating alignment on priorities and efforts.
4. Resource Allocation: Determine where investments in IT can have the most significant strategic impact, ensuring resources are used effectively.
5. Risk Management: Identify vulnerabilities or over-reliance on certain technologies, systems or vendors, helping to shape a more resilient IT strategy.

Managing IT Costs & ROI

1. Identify Commoditization: Recognize which components have become commodities, signaling opportunities for cost reductions.
2. Spot Duplication: By mapping the landscape, redundancies in the technology stack become evident, enabling consolidation and cost savings.
3. Prioritize Investments: See which parts of the landscape offer the most strategic value or are evolving, guiding where to invest for the highest ROI.
4. Evaluate Vendor Value: Determine if vendors are providing value commensurate with their costs based on the maturity and importance of their offerings in the map.
5. Forecast Future Costs: Understand the trajectory of components as they evolve, helping to anticipate future costs associated with migrations, upgrades, or decommissioning.

Cybersecurity Threats & Data Protection

1. Highlight Critical Components: Identify and prioritize systems that are crucial for business operations, revealing where heightened security measures are needed.
2. Visualize Data Flow: Understand the flow of data through the organization, pinpointing potential weak spots or areas of vulnerability.
3. Assess Vendor Risk: Evaluate the security maturity of third-party components or services, aiding in vendor selection and risk management.
4. Guide Security Investment: By visualizing the landscape, determine where security investments can best mitigate risks and protect valuable assets.
5. Track Evolution & Threat Landscape: As components mature and evolve, so do their associated threats. Wardley Maps can help anticipate these changes and adjust security strategies accordingly.

Talent Acquisition & Retention

1. Skill Gap Analysis: By mapping out the current technology landscape, identify areas where there might be a lack of expertise, directing talent acquisition efforts.
2. Future-Proofing: Understand the trajectory of technology evolution within the map, predicting future skill requirements and allowing for proactive hiring or training.
3. Identify Key Roles: Highlight areas that are crucial to business strategy or undergoing rapid change, helping to determine roles that are critical for retention or competitive hiring.
4. Talent Deployment: Use the map to allocate talent effectively, ensuring that skilled professionals are working on the most impactful and strategic areas.
5. Career Path Visualization: For retention, use the evolution insight from the map to guide conversations about career development, showcasing potential growth areas and future opportunities within the organization.

This last section have been the most challenging.

So what’s next!

The list is insane, it took effort to list five concrete uses per challenge, and at the end of the exercise, the feeling is: well that’s just theory, probably nobody thinks about all this, CIOs just use it.

So what’s next!

Next, I am trying to understand how much of this is real, understanding that not everybody uses Wardley Mapping in the same way, but they do have something in common: everybody is trying to solve a problem.

Here a summary of these main uses:

Some final questions for the reader:

• What is your view on this exercise?
• Do you identify some of these uses as feasible?
• What do you think that Wardley Mapping practice should improve to enable better adoption in the professional space?

The questions I have added are there with the purpose of provoking you on them. You are free to comment if you want, as the conversation is the key part of Wardley Mapping, but it was not the main purpose of these questions.

I continue exploring with curiosity the different uses of Wardley Mapping, and if you have just a moment to answer 3 questions, I would be grateful.

3 quick questions 

My commitment? I will add your answers in a month to this same blog.

If you’re on the wait list, you’ll get it a week earlier (July 10th).

Q: What’s a Pip Deck?

It’s a skills upgrade and confidence booster in a box. 54 tactics that tell you exactly what steps to follow and why, in categories like purpose, leadership, adaptation, plays, and more.

Q: Are there any cards about Wardley Mapping?

A: Strategy Tactics doesn’t try to sum up the field of strategy overall but instead goes deep on two specific bodies of work that more people ought to learn about —Wardley Mapping and Ideal Present Design. So yeah, there’s Wardley Mapping!

Q: How long did the Strategy Tactics deck take to develop?

A: It took about 15 months of work to identify 54 useful tactics, devise the strategy system, and write and rewrite each card again and again. (We finished the first 90% in about 6 months, but the last 90% was the real challenge!)

Q: How did you pick the best tactics to include?

A: We started with the essentials from Ideal Present Design and Wardley Mapping — everything we would regret not including — and then built out from there. Since the strategy system is more or less comprehensive, it was easier to find holes in the deck. Then we just had to find something good enough, valuable enough, and long-lasting enough that fit.

Q: Why was a Pip Deck the best format for these ideas?

A: We tried sharing our favorite books with our colleagues and clients, but in the end nobody would read them. After all, every book is a gamble; you have no idea whether the investment of reading it cover to cover will be worth it! A Pip Deck boils down the essential points into step-by-step actions you can take right away. It’s a safer bet, and you get results right away. Of course we still want you to read the books too, but we understand if you’d rather use a Pip Deck.

Don’t forget to join the wait list!

Thank you, Yoga! Your response read like poetry to me.

Up next, “Newbie mapper” writes in:

Sometimes people ask me to look at their maps.

Then they ask me, “Is it right?”

I’ll let you in on my poorly-kept secret: I have no idea.

But here’s what I can do.

I can check for structure.

I can also listen to how you talk about it, to see if what I see in the map matches what I hear as you explain the situation or share your argument about what to do.

And I can ask basic questions to test your map.

But in the end, there’s very little I can do to confirm it’s “right.”

Partly, that’s because I don’t have the expertise to know. I haven’t been doing your job as long as you have! Only you (and others like you) will be able to know.

“Right” isn’t a good goal for a map.

I know, I know. You’ve heard it before. Maps need to be “useful” more than they need to be “right.” I won’t bore you with all that again.

And our newbie mapper still has a question that needs answering. I don’t think saying, “make your map useful, not right” is going to help.

So let me modify the question, in the hopes that I can give a better answer:

How can we make sure a Wardley Map is a good enough representation of the situation?

For this, I have a few things to try.

#1: Rubber ducking

A method useful for debugging software, rubber ducking is also great for Wardley Maps.

Just find a rubber duck (or other suitably inanimate object) and explain your map to it, bit by bit.

Just talk out loud, hear what you say, and confirm that it makes sense.

You’ll catch all sorts of surprisingly obvious mistakes this way.

(And if anyone asks, you’re not talking to yourself. You’re rubber ducking! It’s completely different!)

#2: Write it out in words and share

Once your rubber duck has gotten tired of listening, try sharing with a human.

First, write down the explanation you verbalized for the rubber duck. Check that it makes sense.

Then, share it with someone who is glad to tell you what you get wrong. (You don’t have to share the map, just what you’ve written.)

See what commentary they offer, and adjust your map accordingly!

#3: Define your terms

A slight extension on writing it down, try to create a glossary that defines all the components on your map.

Share the glossary (but again not the map) with others for feedback, perhaps one term at a time. (Less is more here.)

Expect to get contradicting feedback from different people, like one word meaning many different things, or many different words that refer to the same thing.

(Reality is still super messy like that, regardless of whether you manage to make a useful map of it.)

Revise your map as you learn from the feedback. Make bold decisions about what to do in the face of contradiction.

Evaluating your map’s stability

A map is a piece of knowledge (or perhaps data, depending on how you look at it) so that means you can also evaluate how evolved it is. (Yes, you can use Wardley Mapping on your Wardley Map!)

Any evolving thing has an applicable market — a scope within which we can review the thing’s evolutionary characteristics. In this case, at least at first, that applicable market is just you!

Per the table in the link above, Knowledge progresses through the following labels, stage by stage:

1. Concept
2. Hypothesis
3. Theory
4. Universally Accepted

And meanwhile, Data progresses through the following labels, too:

1. Unmodelled
2. Divergent
3. Convergent
4. Modelled

Given these ways of describing each of the four stages, you might be able to see where your map fits.

It might help to ask, “How often do you learn things that cause your map to change?”

If the answer is “all the time,” then it’s unstable and early in its evolution (stages 1-2).

But if it hasn’t changed in years, and you still think it’s representative of the situation, then it’s probably more highly evolved at that point (stages 3-4). So, maybe it’s “universally accepted” (if that universe only has one person in it… you! ).

From there, you might decide to reduce bias (hello, doctrine!) by expanding your applicable market beyond yourself to include other players, comparing your assumptions to theirs to see how they stack up. (This may change what stage you think your map is in, and that’s normal.)

I’m not sure that was very clear. Did it make sense? Hit reply to let me know if it didn’t!

It gets easier with experience

You’ll never truly know if your map is “right,” but with time and practice you’ll certainly get a better sense for it.

Remember that we’re just aiming for our maps to be “not wrong” enough to use them to do some good thinking.

Above all, keep an open mind, and be ready to change your map when you find out you got something wrong. Tigers, not mice.

Got a Wardley Mapping question? Send it in here!

Audrey M. asks:

Thank you for writing in, Audrey! Any body of knowledge, big or small, book or card deck, will have a gap to jump over to put it into practice.

Here’s my annoying answer: The antidote is experience, by which I mean going out and getting new experiences where you get practice with that book (or deck) knowledge.

Make that the goal: “How can I get more experiences with this?”

A few ideas:

• Convince one friend or colleague to try it out with you. (The buddy system is how I survived my entry into Wardley Mapping 8 or so years ago.)
• Search for an online meetup to join (here’s one).
• Jump into a public discussion area, like the Map Camp Slack or the Pip Decks community Slack (I hang out in the #strategy-tactics channel), and then ask questions relentlessly until someone responds.
• Search on social media for people talking about Wardley Mapping (hashtags like #WardleyMaps or #WardleyMapping might help). Then DM a few of them and convince them to jump on a call. (My general rule for this is, “DM 10 people to get 1 willing participant.”)
• Or honestly you can just email me anytime you get stuck (just hit reply to this message), and I’ll do my best to help (that goes for everyone).

Given all that, I worry that it’ll come across as me saying “just try harder.”

(Like, “Gee, thanks, Ben. I’ll just ‘go have experiences,’ lol.” )

I don’t want “try harder” to be the answer.

So I’ll admit some things.

For instance, I’ll admit that I don’t have better answers than getting new experiences (yet).

I’ll admit that the gap between knowledge and practice for Wardley Mapping is pretty huge, and there’s not a ton of clarity about how to reliably traverse it. You just muddle through and hopefully make it to the other side.

I’ll admit that it’s not a friendly or inviting experience.

I’ll admit that I don’t feel good about it.

So, I also need to say this to you:

You’re not an idiot, and there’s nothing wrong with you.

You opened by sharing that you felt like an idiot.

You’re not an idiot.

Wardley Mapping is extremely useful.

It’s also difficult and unintuitive.

Sometimes that unintuitiveness is for good reason. Often, it’s not.

Unintuitiveness makes us think. It’s slow, clumsy, and full of friction. Sometimes that’s appropriate, like when you’re deciding something important.

Too much of Wardley Mapping, however, requires you to spend your brainpower on things that don’t really matter.

For example, interpreting complicated graphics, parsing dense tables of information, and making sense of all the jargon.

A purist would say that it’s your rite of passage into the land of Wardley, but that sounds silly to me (like a self-administered hazing).

Instead, we could just make it better. And I think we should, but it takes work and time.

I’ve certainly tried with LWM, with courses and coaching, and with YouTube videos. And there are others out there, like WardleyPedia, and the Awesome List.

But we’ve got a ways to go.

While I do try to be dispassionate when I consider whether Wardley Mapping will survive and grow over the years, I will say this:

If it remains unintuitive in the wrong places, then too few people will figure out how to use it, and it’ll fizzle out.

The phrase “relegated to obscurity” comes to mind.

I think that’d be a shame, because I think Wardley Mapping has the potential to help a lot of people do a lot of good.

Some parts of Wardley Mapping do need friction, so we aren’t thoughtless in how we use it. But much of what is hard right now really shouldn’t be.

I think we ought to work on it.

As I also am a one-person operation, I must first warn you that we are not special! It may feel like we are doing something unique, but in many, many ways we are not.

Actually, that applies to most organizations I consult with, too. The vast majority of the components they use to create value are not that special. Not unique. Not particularly interesting.

Usually, there is a very small set of components that are actually unique or differentiating when compared to what the rest of the market has to offer.

In other words, any given component in your design is unlikely to be truly unique when compared to other designs in the applicable market. Uniqueness is the exception.

So what do you have, as a consultant, that is truly unique?

Your experiences are always a good bet. There are certain things you have seen or done that few others have.

In my case, I’m one of very few people available who make a living teaching others about Wardley Mapping. But I also have personal life experiences that make me who I am and inform how I go about teaching and consulting.

Everything else I have or do in my consulting work is not particularly unique or differentiating from the standpoint of the market. I answer my emails. I am polite. I do what I say I’ll do. I schedule calls, send invoices, and design workshops.

These very basic things are important but not unique. For these components, I have decided to ignore my instinct to differentiate and instead focus on seeking the best way to fulfill them.

The components themselves are not unique, but perhaps there’s quite a bit worth considering around how we compose those components together into a design — a working system that delivers value.

Different designs can produce different outcomes, even if they use the same components. It’s all in the relationships between those components. The design itself can be a source of useful differentiation. But even then, there are often sensible blueprints to follow. You have to become opinionated about when to paint by the numbers and when to go outside their lines.

So that’s a bit of what I start considering in response to the question.

Yes, you want a winning strategy, but to start you need to get yourself right in terms of what’s differentiating, what’s not so differentiating, and then how you compose everything together to create value.

So, with that out of the way…

Practically, I’d make a Wardley Map of the situation surrounding the need for your consulting services. To butcher the advice of my dear friend Jabe Bloom, “Always situate your design in the next biggest situation.”

A chair fits into a dining room situation. What situation does your consulting work fit within? Yes there’s the map of what you do. But zoom out. What map is that map inside of? What’s the bigger situation?

Sometimes it helps to study other players. You can use OSINT (e.g., reading stuff on the internet) to explore what your competitors offer and what their clients need. I’d make maps of competitor and client businesses, using whatever you can find to inform your view of how they think. The goal, again, is to understand the bigger situation of which they (and you) are already a part.

Compare these different maps. What do those players know that you don’t? What do you think is possible that they don’t? What options do you have that they won’t even consider? What options do they have that you can’t pursue?

Wardley’s Doctrine, Climate, and Leadership tables are useful here.

Doctrine for getting yourself right.

Climate for noticing what’s gonna happen with or without you (so you can go with the flow).

And Leadership gameplays for ideas about how you might change the market to create a more favorable situation for yourself (though to be honest it’s not always necessary).

Often, once you’ve studied the situation closely, the options for “winning” become clear and obvious. Yes you’ll have to weigh one thing versus another, but you’ll find that the options are abundant and not even particularly well-hidden. It’s just that by making a Wardley Map, you bothered to look where others didn’t. So, look!

Importantly, you need to decide what “winning” means. In many cases, you can win without someone else losing.

Consider this thread by Mr. Wardley:

I’d invite further conversation on this question. I don’t think I can really answer it completely here today. But the least I can do is offer a few things to think about. Thanks for asking!

Well, Greg, I’m afraid it’s too late. ChatGPT has already taken the lead on this one.

Or rather, Steve Pereira kicked the exploration off. So whatever happens next is his fault now.

I, for one, welcome our Wardley-based autonomous overlords!

In all seriousness, because capitalism isn’t meritocratic but wears meritocracy like a wolf wears sheep’s clothing, even if Wardley Mapping was the most perfect, deserving methodology to grace our lives, even then it wouldn’t be a sure thing that it would survive long enough in the market for someone to create an autonomous AI agent that implements its ideas.

However bearing in mind that my expertise is not AI or ML or LLMs or whatever else, I suspect there are parts of Wardley Mapping that we could eventually use AI to enhance.

For context, I already think of the strategic thinking process in Wardley Mapping in terms of a rudimentary algorithm. It goes a little something like this:

• For each component in the Wardley Map:
  • For each item in the doctrine, climate, and leadership tables:
    • Ask: “Is this relevant?”
    • If it is relevant, consider it deeply.

For example, I can pick something on my Wardley Map and ask whether the climate pattern “Everything evolves through supply and demand competition” is relevant or noteworthy to it.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, of course. That’s where human judgement usually applies.

Asking the question is something I think an AI could do, but I have reservations about it giving answers, even if it had plenty of human decisions to train on.

Strategy also often requires asymmetry. An AI model would only be able to reproduce options based on what it “learned” from its training data.

But at the same time, human decisions right now often don’t really do the sensible “symmetrical” option. So an agent suggesting hypothetically symmetrical options could create benefits. But could you trust those options?

I feel conflicted.

I suppose, if symmetry came from what Wardley has shared publicly (there’s plenty he hasn’t, I suspect)… and I guess if everyone had their own personal Simon Wardley whispering suggestions in their ears, we’d hit an equilibrium of strategic gameplay and need to find a way to create asymmetry again. And that would necessitate human skill, just like we’re seeing as people adjust to the new normal of ChatGPT.

Regardless, a more immediate challenge for an AI, I think, might be the creation of the Wardley Map itself. Ontology is hard. There are weird papers out there that I like to skim to remind myself how hard it is. (For example, GRANULAR COMPUTING APPLIED TO ONTOLOGIES, DOI:10.1016/J.IJAR.2009.11.006).

I suppose you could probably teach an AI to make a Wardley Map by extracting the right nouns and inferring the right relationships from a set of news articles or similar. But could you trust that model? What would that model privilege? (What biases would be baked in?) And how would that impact the decisions it would make?

I could imagine the utility of AI as decision support, to make sure you consider all the things that ought to be considered. But an autonomous agent making decisions? I’m nervous about it.

So, to answer Greg’s question… How long? Pick one:

• Never!
• Or it happened already. (Thanks, Steve Pereira!)
• ​Or in 12 years. (That’s a link to Wardley’s personal blog, btw. Worth a look!)

Fun question. Thanks for asking, Greg.

Addendum: Mr. Wardley has been doing something interesting with ChatGPT and Bard, using these tools as interfaces to their underlying training data. Read more about his research here.

Hi there! I asked for your questions about Wardley Mapping, and you sure answered!

First up, Joel Eden asks:

I love this question, because it’s a great excuse to share a lesson I learned through experiences of repeated failure. (The best kind of lesson!)

Don’t lead with the label.

A label is what’s on the tin.

It’s the brand name. Wardley Mapping. Team Topologies. Cynefin. Eventstorming. Whatever.

An unestablished brand does zip zero zilch nada for the credibility of the thing it’s attached to. The Business Model Canvas is well established with name recognition. Same for Jobs to be Done, Kanban, and Agile. But Wardley Mapping is in that weird spot where it’s not ubiquitous enough to be taken seriously on name alone.

How do you evaluate something when the brand tells you nothing?

For physical products, it’s sort of easy. You can inspect the product, evaluate its design and construction, and even test it out to determine whether it’s any good.

The quality and usefulness of methods cannot be evaluated so easily.

Methods require investment to try — in knowing, in doing, and more — and if you don’t get results, there will always be some die-hard fan or thoughtleader ready to tell you that you didn’t do it right or try hard enough.

Needless to say, sharing new methods with an audience already on its guard is an uphill battle, even if the thing is genuinely useful.

So you say, “Hey have you heard of Wardley Mapping?” And either distrust or disinterest takes center stage. If you push on regardless, then eyes glaze over and they wish they could be elsewhere.

The label is what triggers the disconnect. It’s the thing that says, “Hey I’m about to rope you into a big investment you aren’t really wanting to make into something that probably won’t actually help.”

So eventually I just learned to avoid the trigger. And that led me to something obvious.

Use the tools instead.

Every method has a set of tools —situational implements that provide some kind of value on their own.

Wardley Mapping has lots of these little high-value tools littered throughout the climate, doctrine, leadership tables and elsewhere in the book:

• users and needs
• value chains
• evolution
• build, buy, outsource
• use appropriate methods
• attitudes (PST, or as my co-author and I have been saying, IAO: Invention / Advancement / Optimization)
• fast, inexpensive, restrained, elegant (FIRE)
• and many others…

While you can’t evaluate full methods up-front easily, you can try out their tools and see if they help. So, focus on value by picking a tool that will aid in the situation and then just go do it with the other person.

Would evolution be helpful here? Use it as a tool!

“Evolution says that everything starts out rare and uncertain, and over time gradually becomes more common and more well-understood. Where does our work fit along that spectrum?”

What about a simple list of users and needs? Use it as a tool!

“Who is this meant to serve again? And what are they getting?”

The tools have roots into deeper parts of the method. And if the other person gets value from those tools? Then share the label.*

“It’s from a thing called Wardley Mapping! Here’s where to learn more…”

Value first, label second.

So Joel, that’s my suggestion. Work the smaller tools that Wardley Mapping offers into the stuff you’re already doing. Don’t make it a big deal, and then they won’t feel like they’re starting over. If it’s valuable, and they want more, then tell them where to go to get more.

For me, this is a variation on a theme I’ve been exploring for the last few years. You might enjoy this related post: Nobody cares about your precious framework​

And if you are curious to see me blurt out the first version of this post while hanging out in my Honda and wearing a Perry the Platypus hat, here you go:

Special thanks to Joel Eden, and to all those who sent in your lovely questions! I’ll keep working through ’em. And if you’d like to submit a question of your own, you can do so here.

Addendum: Just a reminder that Wardley Mapping is licensed Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0. That means you can share and adapt it for any purpose, as long as you give appropriate credit to Simon Wardley, provide a link to the license, and indicate if any changes were made. Also, if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. My advice in this post is NOT to violate the terms of the license but rather to be more tactful about how we introduce methods like Wardley Mapping to others!

You see, I believe that strategy is a skill that you cannot unlearn. Once you know some basics, you become someone who wants to be purposeful… who wants to design things deliberately… who cares.

Here’s the story I tell myself: “The more people there are who care, who put purposeful designs into the world, the better the world can be.”

Put another way, I think that many of the problems we see in the world are the result of an unintentional, thoughtless, reactive posture (one that is highly exploitable by exceptional bad actors).

So that’s my optimism at work. I think that to bring about more good in the world, we should encourage more people to learn strategy.

Wardley Mapping democratizes strategy

The purpose of LearnWardleyMapping.com is to make Wardley Mapping more accessible.

But why bother with Wardley Mapping? Well, I believe it has the potential to democratize strategy and contribute to the good consequences of learning strategy I mentioned above.

Wardley Mapping is free to learn, and it very easily outperforms the status quo decision-making methods we so frequently encounter in our workplaces (for example, the gut feelings of the oft-encountered HiPPO).

However, “free” doesn’t mean “easy,” and Wardley Mapping can still pose quite a challenge to learn.

The first obstacle is the reading assignment. Simon Wardley graciously provided the whole method Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike in blog/book form, but not everyone enjoys learning through long-form writing.

The second obstacle is confusion about exactly how to do it… how to make Wardley Maps, how to use all the tables, and so on. The book has instructions, but they can be challenging to understand and follow.

The third obstacle is self-doubt. This one’s the worst, because a person can spend all the time reading and learning the mechanics of Wardley Mapping only to slam into the brick wall of “Am I doing this right?”

Overcome these obstacles, and you’ll be unstoppable.

So, by writing posts like this one, running the website, and offering training, I hope to help more people clear these hurdles so they can start making the world a better place.

We can do this together

Now that you know what I’m up to with this site, there’s no better time to confess to you why I’m doing such a bad job at it.

In short, content schedules suck.

I have studied and tried so many different ways to make content creation a breeze, and while they all work just fine, unfortunately I can will myself to do exactly zero of them on a schedule. In fact, it’s a miracle that I’m hitting publish on this post.

So… in a rare feat of self-acceptance, I’m giving up.

No more schedules. No more forcing myself to make Wardley Mapping stuff for the sake of making it.

Instead, I’m going to ask for your help.

You see, people are the opposite of content schedules. People are amazingly motivating. I can care about people. I can’t give a shovel’s worth of muck about content schedules. But people are cool. You are cool.

So, I’d like to try something, with your help.

What if we ran this thing like an advice column?

We’ve had luck with that format in the past, and I’d like to see if it’s worth doing again.

So, I invite you to send in your questions, challenges, grumbles, ideas… anything that’s on your mind about Wardley Mapping or strategy in general. And in return, I’ll share your questions here and do my best to offer ideas and advice. Who knows, maybe I’ll even make a video or two!

Want to give it a try? Send me your questions here!