(This is not an introduction to Wardley Mapping in general. If you’re looking to understand what a Wardley Map is, why you would want to use one, etc. I’d recommend checking out some of the resources on wardleymaps.com.)

Recently on the Rands Leadership Slack somebody was looking for step-by-step instructions on how to start using Wardley Maps with a small leadership group.

I think part of the reason it’s hard to find that sort of playbook is that folk use Wardley Maps in many different contexts, and for many different purposes. They’re also generally persistent objects that get continually revisited and revised over time.

So it’s kinda-sorta like asking for a “backlogs playbook”; The going from nothing-at-all to first-board is not something that happens often, and the use cases around those artefacts are so varied that a simple guide is often not of much use.

When I’ve used it, it’s been mostly to help nail down one or more of:

• Alignment on the problem being addressed, and the things being currently being used to address it right now — so getting “where are we now” up and on the board, Which means alignment both across “what is in the value chain” and “where are those components commoditization wise”.
• Looking at places where that current state is misaligned with reality (we’re building a thing that we can buy off the shelf — why?, etc.)
• Getting alignment on how we expect things to change (Bob thinks we need to build WidgetFactory to support some bit of value, Mary thinks WidgetFactory is probably gonna be something we can buy off the shelf in 18 months, etc.)
• Using an aligned “now” state to ask ourselves a bunch of “what if” questions about how things are gonna be going in the future — and how that is aligned (or not) with our vision & strategy.

But there are lots of other valuable things you can do with Wardley Maps.

That said — at some point folk will be taking a leadership group and attempting to build a first Wardley Map. Some general things I’ve found useful in that context:

• Nail the user need at the top of the value chain first.
• If folk are not used to the value chain concept expect a stack of disagreement / alignment issues around that first. If you’ve got multiple markets / products / user groups it’s sometimes easier to focus on the dominant one first.
• Work on the value chain(s) first and ignore the commoditization dimension until you get them sorted. Don’t try and have both arguments at once!
• When you get to the commoditization discussion try and get components positioned relatively to each other before you start anchoring stuff to specific labels along that dimension.

What follows is not a perfect workshop outline for every context. It’s been thrown together from the agenda of a few different Wardley Mapping sessions I’ve run. Each of those was adapted to deal with local conditions — so what follows is bringing some of the common elements together in one place. Hopefully it should provide a useful starting point that you can tweak for your current situation.

Assumptions

• We have a facilitator who is not involved in actually building the map to run the session.
• Around half a dozen attendees tops + the facilitator.
• About a 120 minute time slot.
• We’ve not got “I don’t wanna be here” people in the room (convincing folk this is a sensible activity to try is out of scope and best handled separately.)
• We come in with a user group to anchor the value chain on.
• I’m assuming an in-person session (which is a big assumption I freely acknowledge). I would imagine something along these lines would work fairly well online — but I’ve not done it, and you’d need to add a stack of structure to a Miro/Mural/whatever board to help folk through it.
• Lots of wall space, post it notes, and masking tape.

Before the Session

• Send folk a little outline of Wardley Mapping, what the session is trying to achieve, the schedule, and some links to introduce folk to Wardley Mapping (e.g. this 20 min video by Simon Wardley)

Set the Scene (10 min)

• As a reminder + to help the ones who have inevitably not done any pre-work — show the 90 second introduction to Wardley Mapping from https://learnwardleymapping.com.

• Remind folk of the schedule for the session — and that we’re gonna explore the value chain dimension first, then the commoditisation dimension second.

• Big arse post-it note with the anchor for the value chain on it. Get agreement from all that this is what we’re writing the map too.

• If you cannot get agreement then two routes:

  • Go for “disagree and commit” for the purposes of the session
  • Time box 20m to get alignment, and split off everything after the Coffee/bio break at the end to a separate session. There is a temptation to run long rather than splitting stuff up… I’d recommend against it (folk will be tired!)

Build the Value Chain (50 min)

• 10m: Individual generation of value chain components

  • Ask folk to individually generate value chain components for our context — one component per post-it.
  • Get a couple of examples of value chains up somewhere visible to give some inspiration — look for the ones that push hard to end up with stuff like “electricity” (because a common failure mode is attendees not breaking down the chain enough — and pushing folk to go too far will drag more information out of the group as a whole.)
  • Verbalise a few examples of breaking-stuff-down when folk start slowing down a little.
  • If folk are still scribbling at 10m let it run long — more stuff now is good.
  • One of the frequent questions I see is “does X count” and the answer right now is “yes”. Folk can always cull stuff later.
  • That said — you want to keep the context to “now” rather than “the thing we’re gonna build” or “how we want it to be”.

• 30m: Merge individual stuff into a single board

  • Get a big chunk of wall with the user-need post it at the top.
  • Get all folk’s individual post-its on the wall in rough value chain order top-to-bottom, either as a mob of people or one-by-one depending on formality levels.
  • Get the group to merge everything into a single value chain.
  • Have an ice box area for folk to move things they consider irrelevant or duplicated, rather than throwing things away. (Having the option of changing your mind can make the process easier for people.)
  • Make sure folk aren’t actually hiding different levels of abstraction by removing duplication (e.g. keeping “web site” and throwing away “store”, “marketing site”, “support site”, etc.) You want to keep different levels of abstraction not discard them.
  • Look out for people who have stuff that is radically different from everybody else. This can be a good thing (perspectives that everybody is missing) or a bad thing (radical misalignment) and you’re gonna need to steer appropriately.
  • If folk bring up “what about X” stuff that’s missing from the board encourage folk to add ’em in.

• 10m: Review Review the board as a group:

  • Is there anything that we’re missing?
  • Are we aligned on the relative positions in the value chain?
  • If folk are radically disagreeing at this point then Something Is Up and I would be wanting to stop now + schedule in something separate to explore that.

Coffee/bio break (10 min)

• This a good stopping point if you wanna split this across days and/or have had to run long and need to reschedule the rest of the session.
• If you do stop here do a quick round of “things we learned” with attendees before you stop.
• Record the current state of the board in case we need to revisit/reset later.

Review / Context setting (10 min)

• Ask folk about anything they discovered / were surprised about in the value chain exploration
• Review the commoditised dimension with a couple of example maps from other folk.

Align Components Relatively (30 min)

• The outcome we want from this section is the components aligned relatively to each other along the commoditised dimension — rather than being in particular buckets.
• Can either let folk mob the board, or get folk to go into pairs.
• Encourage folk to compare pairs of components — more/less is what we’re after.
• If folk have trouble with a pair encourage them to look for something on the board that they are sure that it’s less/more on and then align relative to that
• This can sometimes go really fast and you won’t need the full 30m. Or end up in argument hell.
• If folk align quickly you can introducing the commoditisation buckets of genesis / custom built / etc. and start talking about climate.
• If you end up in argument hell then there is a lack of alignment. I tend to attack that in two different ways
  • Encourage folk to articulate “How would we know?” questions, then answer them. This can sometimes resolve things quickly, or highlight that folk have been talking about different things, or that the answers are really “we don’t know”.
  • Encourage folk to mark out the breadth of where they think a component could sit — masking tape can be good since it allows folk to move stuff around more.

Final Review (10 min)

• By this point we should have a vaguely decent first stab at a map
• Ask folk about anything they discovered / were surprised about in the commoditisation exploration
• Try and get a prioritised list of ‘what next’ now we have this visualisation. As the facilitator keep track of interesting questions during the session. Do a quick dot vote to get an idea of priorities. Stuff that often comes up:
  • How do we align in the places we’re not aligned
  • How do would our competitors be placed on this chart
  • Do we want to change where are components are placed?
  • How does this fit in with our current strategy?
  • etc.
• If you can get a session booked in to address the biggest issue booked in at the end of the session while folk are engaged.
• Record the map with some photos. Then after the session tidy it up into a proper doc.
• Copy everybody in with photo & the diagram to double check that you captured everything correctly.
• Pay attention to the ice box area — are there things that are potentially useful there that you should be highlighting for future sessions?

Hopefully the above will be a vaguely useful starting point for those planning their own sessions! I want to emphasise again this isn’t a one-size-fits-all session - and you’ll need to tweak it for your organisational context. Think about where disagreements are likely to sit – and places where the alignment conversations may go long — and plan accordingly.

TL;DR: Get alignment on the anchor for the value chain. Independently generate value chain components to get as many perspectives as possible. Merge components and align on a final value chain. Then align components relatively along the commoditisation dimension.

ttfn.

(updates as of Wednesday 21 August 2024)

I’ve been having some lovely conversations with people about this post since it was first published. Some highlights below.

Mark Dalgarno commented:

“Sometimes workshop participants won’t agree on what evolutionary state a system is in because it would be politically difficult to acknowledge it is far more in Genesis than they have told others…”

Which is spot on (I’ve seen the opposite problem too — folk assuming something is somewhere between magic-and-impossible when it’s actually off-the-shelf.) This is why it’s so important to get lots of different perspectives in the room for this sort of exercise.

Christoph Steinlehner suggested using Service Blueprints to help explore the value chain:

“If it is hard to come up with the components a Service Blueprint Session can help to extract components. … I found it especially useful if the components are unclear. Going through the journey and asking which systems are involved is usually easier than starting from a blank spot.”

I’ve never tried doing this — but sounds like it would work well. I imagine that it would be especially successful if the organisation was already using Service Blueprints as artefacts.

Thomas Lissajoux had some suggestions if you’re working with larger groups:

Only differences were working with larger groups of 15-20 in subgroups … I never saw a preparation work happen beforehand … Which takes a little bit too much time on the upper part …

Once there were 2 clear sub chains and we could clearly split & merge. Other times it was messier: one group presented its results & other groups taking turns with diffs.

2 facilitators for 4 subgroups.

I like the idea of identifying sub-chains first and then focusing on splitting work around that. Large groups are always painful — and Thomas was smart to get more facilitators in to help.

Tom Kerwin commented:

FWIW, I’ve found I had the most success when I didn’t mention Wardley Mapping or any of the theory up front, or sometimes even at all, beyond a simple view of the stages of evolution. I noticed that people get all tied up worrying about the theory and doing it “right” and that’s the kiss of death.

Instead I got teams started by having them simply list the “stuff” that’s needed to provide service to a user. Then stack that up, spot links, gaps and puzzles.

Just like you, this is gently getting them to make their first value chain. And I completely agree – figure that value chain out before even contemplating evolution.

I also agree that the anchor is messy and hard, but sometimes I’ve found it’s easier to come at it “backwards” from the value chain, as we’re all often more aware of the details of what we’re doing/building than we are of what people are really buying off us!

Which all makes excellent sense to me — and matches some of my experiences. I’ve also experienced encountered groups surfacing multiple anchors when they dig into the value chain exploration. Which leads to some fun conversations about who exactly we’re supposed to be serving.