Hadn’t seen this presentation, but had heard it was good from colleagues. Having watched a few times, he is a very confident talker who keeps you engaged at all times.
The main thing I took away from the talk was how clear and concise his observations, comments, and articulations were. It was a well put together piece, which has probably been practiced across the land!
Whether this was due to the Wardley Maps or his own charisma, I can’t comment, but imagine it would be both. Leading from the talk Randy Should led, where he mentioned the old Kettering proverb that problem well defined is a problem half solved, this applies directly to the Wardley Maps in that it distinctly allows you to plot the problem and understand it’s surroundings.
Purpose - what are you trying to achieve Landscape - what is in the environment you are trying to acheive Climate - what are the changing factors in the landscape Doctrine - decide the patterns & actions to take Leadership - lead through the actions.
Treat this as a cycle - where landscape can affect everything.
OODA Loops overlay this: Observe -> Landscape and Climate Orient -> Doctrine Decisions -> Leadership ACT! & Loop around the cycle.
Maps are different from Graphs, because they have space as a context - which give meaning to the space.
Mind / System / etc Maps all aren’t really maps, as they don’t have meaning to the space.
Universally applicable principles regardless of context
Maps are a good means of learning. Provides context to be able to define domains.
This leads to the ability to group teams into domain teams, rather than by aptitue (i.e. by sales rather than business / developmemt /test).
Goes on to show that a good way to group people is by Aptitude and Attitude, so have the people who like building new things building the new software, people who like working with existing models building the services of off the shelf products, etc.
The case was then that the teams were working in more siloed teams around core and new functionality, the dev teams would create new functions & try to hand over to core platform - this caused friction, with Core refusing to take all of the work with no documentation etc.
This led to the dev teams building new on top of new.
This was an implementation of a system called Pioneers, Settlers & Town Planners
Fortunately, this could be splitting the teams into “Tribes” along the three groups above.
This was defined by attitudes on the verticals (Pioneers are people who like changing things).
You would then split on the horizontals into “Guilds” by Aptitudes (Engineering / Finance).
Small teams were within this, like squads. A system of theft allowed team members from one area to push others out, allowing a cycle.
Boiling Frogs document was linked at https://github.com/gchq/BoilingFrogs/blob/master/GCHQ_Boiling_Frogs.pdf
He also has a book on the maps he used in his presentation, which were very useful at
The details behind his mapping system are here : https://medium.com/wardleymaps - this is in article format so would be good to read via pocket or similar.
Leading Edge Forum also run a course to learn at https://learn.leadingedgeforum.com/courses/wardley-mapping/ - though if you want to save $75 you can just read the medium piece for many, many hours 😆! Simon was very engaging so hopefully his writing will be