So you’ve got a Wardley Map…now what?
I’ve recently been involved in a few different talks where people have mentioned Wardley Mapping as a tool to help with decision-making and being a bit of a fan of the technique, I thought I’d share how I’ve managed to get value from them in the past to help guide strategic decisions.
The basics…
I won’t go into too much detail on what a Wardley map is or how to build them, as you can hear it from Simon Wardley himself here (he’s a really entertaining presenter!) What I will cover though, are the key parts that will help me try and explain my thinking a bit further on.
First are the two axes on the map (as I’ve shown in the simple coffee house map below) which are visibility and evolution.
The vertical axis, visibility, is basically just how close the capability on the map is to the user/customer that is going to be using it. Most of the time this has a reasonably strong correlation to how business differentiating that capability can be. For example, changing the way you power the coffee machine isn’t going to have much effect on whether or not customers buy your coffee, but changing the beans that you use could.
The horizontal axis, evolution, essentially shows how mature a capability is. Starting with the unknown and experimental in genesis, through custom-built, products (e.g. off-the-shelf software, saas etc), and to the widely available commodities. Things that are commodities are something that you wouldn’t really ever consider building yourself, like power and water and are often considered just a price of doing business.
One of the most important things to consider is that capabilities are constantly evolving over time and moving towards the right on these maps. This can either be because we are actively developing them into products and commodities, or because our competitors are.
So now that we have some sort of understanding of what the two dimensions on a map are and we’ve put together a basic map, what can we actually use it for?
Let’s make a mess…
In order to clear things up, I’m first going to make a bit of a mess…
On the map here I’ve added a bit of noise so that I can highlight some of the areas that we should focus on. If you have a map that actually looks like this, there’s probably some value in narrowing the scope of it a little to make it a bit easier to reason about.
But now that we’ve got this to work from, let’s see how can find the value in it.
Time for a clear-up…
With so many capabilities on this map, it’s pretty difficult to see the wood from the trees and decide where we should be focusing our attention. For me, there are four main areas to focus on in the maps.
The first is the top left corner. These are the capabilities that are really visible to the user and are newly discovered and experimental. This can be a good area to be performing in-house development as these capabilities are quite likely to be business differentiating, and there probably isn’t a good alternative available to buy on the market. This means that your competitors cannot just buy something to keep up with you, and also have to invest in building something to stay competitive. If things work out in this area, you are in a great position to be the one that evolves this into a product that can be sold. (Think Amazon developing their cloud platform).
The second is the bottom right corner. These are capabilities that are so far removed from the user that they aren’t likely to be business differentiating, and they are also so commonplace that they are an expected cost of doing business. You probably don’t want to be investing in developing these things in-house because they are so widely available that a competitor can buy the same capability for what’s likely to be very little in comparison. For example, you wouldn’t develop your own way of generating electricity.
A side note here however that depending on the context of the map a capability could be in a different place. For a company like cinch, developing our own power source wouldn’t be a good idea, but if you are an energy supplier looking to develop a never before seen green energy source, that makes that capability very visible, very differentiating, and very worth doing some development on.
The next area to focus on is the top right section. These are those capabilities that are very visible to the user but are also already commoditised or are on the way there. This one is an interesting one, as being closer to the user means there’s scope to be competitive, but having the capability available off-the-shelf means that any development investment here may not pay off. For me the play here would be to look to build new in-house capabilities around an off-the-shelf product, hopefully regaining that competitive advantage that rivals cannot easily purchase their way into.
The final area of focus is the bottom left corner of the map. Here the capabilities are way down the value chain for the user and wandering into the unknown. This is also an interesting place to be, as spending time and effort on something new and shiny down here that won’t really be visible to the user and might not turn out to be worthwhile, could be a wasted effort. As with everything there are exceptions though. Maybe this capability gives some much-needed efficiency gains in some of your supporting workloads. Maybe you can see the potential for this to develop into something that you can sell as a commoditised service offering to other companies.
So long…
So that was a brief foray into how you can use Wardley Maps to aid you in making some important business strategy and prioritisation decisions. What are your thoughts? Ready to have a go at your first map and take the first steps into the Wardley cult…sorry…community?
So long, and thanks for reading.
