WardleyMapping

A mapping technique for enterprise consultants by SimonWardley

https://www.wardleymaps.com/

The basic idea is to take all the components or stake-holders of your process and map them on two axes.

• Vertical ("value") - position within value chain or visibility to end consumer / user. Further up, more obvious immediate value, further down, hidden, and more obscure components / dependencies. Lines between nodes represent dependencies of some form.
• Horizontal ("evolution") - degree of commoditization. So further left is more custom, further right is more of a commodity.

You reason from the map.

For example, more commoditized components are more likely to be managed through repeatable, well established, "conservative" processes. Less commoditized require more improvisatory or agile processes. More commoditized can be outsourced or bought as a service, less commoditized should be done in-house. Outsourcing a bundle of components / entities which are at different degrees of commoditization is a ModularityMistake. That contract is unlikely to succeed because the different elements of the bundle need to be managed differently.

You should assume that any technology evolves to move further to the right over time. Strategy might involve a future expectation / scenario that an item has moved to the right.

A heuristic is that as components become more commoditized and cheap they enable new kinds of products which depend on them.

Transcluded from MoldableDevelopment