It’s a nimble way of working
Enter Wardley Maps!
If we can say that nimbleness is an organizational behavior, we can also say that agile is about adopting agile methods. In the latter we can say “We do agile”, and in the former “We are agile”. To be nimble you don’t have to use agile methods mandatorily, but is it a “use or not use at all” situation? Enter Wardley maps.
The difference between agile and nimble
The terms Nimble and Agile have frequently appeared in the context of scientific publications on methodologies and practices used in project management and product development. However, they are presented in different ways in their approach and objectives.
Agile is a management philosophy that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. Agile has been embraced by organizations across industries as an approach that emphasizes iterative and incremental product delivery, close collaboration between customers, business stakeholders, and the development team, and a focus on delivering the highest-valuable features first.
Nimble, on the other hand, is a capability made up of speed of understanding and adequate responsiveness. It’s probably what companies that adopt an agile approach usually look for, but it doesn’t depend on how to do it, but on the result obtained. There is no single person or organization credited with creating this concept, but it has been used more recently and is often used to emphasize the importance of speed and flexibility in the business environment and differentiate this ability from the way how it can be achieved.
In summary, Agile is a way to add value through collaboration and flexibility, while Nimble is the ability to react quickly and efficiently. (Source: Fabricio Laguna, “The Brazilian BA”)
But, a company that works in an agile way is automatically nimble? Is a nimble company by default an agile? Not necessarily, as shown below.
Agile vs Nimble companies
The table below distinguishes these 2 concepts in a matrix that clearly shows why it is necessary to distinguish them. The matrix asks a question on each axis and expects responses between 0 and 100%:
● X-axis: Does the company work in an agile way?
● Y-axis: Is the company nimble?
Quadrant IV of this matrix represents companies that work in an agile way and are not nimble. You certainly know some of these. These are companies that strictly use the practices and concepts of the agile approach such as backlog management, decomposition of user stories, short-term iterations, retrospectives, etc., but are not flexible and have difficulty understanding and reacting to a new business situation.
Quadrant I, on the other hand, presents companies that do not follow the agile approach but are extremely skilled in understanding new needs and reacting quickly to them. You may have seen some of these too. They follow a traditional approach, oriented towards detailed long-term planning, but manage changes to their plans quickly whenever a new reality imposes itself on their business context, understanding the impacts and mapping appropriate solutions to maximize value.
Enter Wardley Maps!
Wardley Maps are designed to help organizations understand and navigate the landscape of their business environment. The primary components of Wardley Maps include:
- Value Chain: The horizontal axis represents the evolution of components from left to right, ranging from a genesis or initial concept on the left to more mature and standardized components on the right.
- Evolution Axis: The vertical axis represents the visibility of components, with user needs and value becoming more visible as you move upwards.
- Components: These are the building blocks or elements of a system or business. They can be anything from technologies and processes to capabilities and practices.
Wardley Maps are often used for strategic planning, fostering discussions about the evolution of components, identifying areas for innovation, and making informed decisions about where to focus resources.
Wardley Mapping was developed by Simon Wardley as a visualisation, communication and strategic planning tool to help organisations understand the different parts of their value chain, as it used to service a specific customer segment. It’s a map of the structure of your business or service, showing the components that are needed to serve the customer or user. Plotting the evolution of different parts of the chain helps leaders to make strategic business decisions based on their working consensus.
Reading and interpreting Wardley Maps involves understanding the key elements within the map and their relationships. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to read Wardley Maps:
- Understand the Axes:
- Value Chain (Horizontal Axis): This axis represents the evolution of components from left to right. Components on the left are more novel or in their early stages, while those on the right are more mature and standardized.
The next step involves mapping these broad categories of value chain activity onto the X dimension of technology or service evolution: Genesis, Custom, Product (+rental) and Commodity (+utility). What we’re trying to understand is whether that specific activity or technology is maturing and becoming commoditized, or if it is remaining more static. Depending on this, we will have to make decisions on how to manage it. For example, genesis-phase activities or technologies could be lucrative as they are emergent and niche, but will need constant and active re-evaluation as they are hard to duplicate with certainty and hard to scale profitably. Commodity-phase activities might best be outsourced to a third-party supplier, as they are essentially a utility that exists to enable other activities.
- Evolution Axis (Vertical Axis): This axis represents the visibility of components. Higher up on the map, components are more visible and relate more directly to user needs.
We map out the parts of the value chain that are deployed to service their needs. These are activities that will help us to solve a user need, from design to cloud. This Y dimension of proximity to the end user becomes one of the anchoring dimensions. Visible are those parts that are closest to the end user, with invisible generally being abstracted away from the user.
2. Identify Components:
- Components are the building blocks on the map. They can be technologies, processes, capabilities, or practices. Each component is positioned based on its level of evolution and visibility.
3. Analyzing Position:
- Upper-Right Quadrant: Components in the upper-right quadrant are mature and well-understood. They are often suitable for outsourcing or standardization.
- Lower-Left Quadrant: Components in the lower-left quadrant are less mature and more experimental. These are areas where innovation and exploration may be beneficial.
4. User Needs and Value Chain:
- Understand how user needs and value chain components relate. Typically, as you move to the right on the value chain, components become more specialized and closer to fulfilling user needs.
5. Dependencies and Interactions:
- Analyze dependencies and interactions between components. Some components may be dependent on others, and understanding these relationships is crucial for strategic planning.
6. Spotting Opportunities:
- Look for opportunities for innovation, differentiation, or cost reduction. These are often found in the less mature or evolving components.
7. Adaptation and Iteration:
- Recognize that a Wardley Map is not a static document. It should be regularly revisited and updated as the landscape evolves.
8. Strategic Decision-Making:
- Use the map to inform strategic decisions. It can help prioritize efforts, identify areas for improvement, and guide resource allocation.
Taking the risk of oversimplifying the use of Wardley maps, we could say that, to build the components placed on the left side of the map, we Will use an Agile method (as it implies experimentations), and, on the right side, work is more predictable so plan-driven or lean approaches work better.
The map nodes are components of the same product, which means that within the same product, you can use different approaches.
As always, knowing what works best for your situation allows you to better respond to your needs.
As a Nimble organization, if a change comes that requires the organization to sense and respond, knowing how the need fits in your current map, as well as how it interacts with the other nodes, enables the organization to respond better and effectively.
Throughout time, the nodes within the map Will inevitably move.
Wardley Mapping contextualizes the evolution by anchoring this to various vertices of the value chain. This in turn attempts to agree position and predict movement.
Each organization will have its own environmental forces applying evolutionary pressure on different parts of your value chain.
Simon Wardley often talks about some patterns he observed about this:
Climatic patterns describe external forces that are impacting our landscape over which we have no control. However, understanding climatic patterns is important when anticipating change. Understanding climatic patterns gives us an idea of where the landscape can change and where to invest in the future.
One pattern is that the landscape is never static but very dynamic. Everything evolves from left to right through the forces of supply and demand competition.
What was decades ago non-existent, evolved through Genesis, custom built, and became product and rental, and now commodity and utility. As the components evolve, their characteristics change from an unchartered domain, undefined market, uncertain, unpredictable, constantly changing, poorly understood chaotic domain, and while it evolves and becomes more stable and mature. We are then facing an industrialized, mature, known, commonly understood, and ordered market on the right.
Wardley’s basic premise is that organizational strategy is based on 5 factors: Purpose, Landscape, Climate, Doctrine and Leadership. Critical to this is an understanding of how these 5 factors play out in terms of position, movement and situational awareness
Being aware of it allows Nimble organizations to continuously seek the best way to respond while targeting for customer-value.
For each evolution stage, we can apply appropriate methods, that’s where we come to the Wardley Doctrine, the next section of the strategy cycle. Doctrine describes universal principles that each industry can apply, regardless of their context. Applying doctrinal principles enables an organization to be able to respond to changes quickly and to be able to absorb changes gracefully. One of the doctrinal principles is using appropriate methods per evolution stage. It means to build components in Genesis, and custom-built in-house, preferably using Agile methods. Or using or buying off-the-shelf products, or using open source software for components in the product and rental evolution stage with preferably lean methods. Or outsourcing components and commodities to utility suppliers, or using preferably Six Sigma methods.
Key takeaways
- To navigate the business and service landscape, nimble organizations should make use of the methods that best adequate according to the place of each system or service in the value chain
- Wardley maps show us where each system or service is placed in terms of value chain (y-axis) and maturity (x-axis)
- When sensing and responding, nimble organizations can analyze and choose the best approach depending on the component position
- The map won’t be static, as it’s perfectly normal (and expected) that components move from left to right, to stage as “commodities”
