At Map Camp 2020, I was asked to do a short talk on "What Wardley Maps mean to me?", as part of a trio with Sue Borchardt and Kaimar Karu. I'll dig up links to their talks (and Sue's fantastic drawings!) once published.
Here, I touch on how I got started with Wardley Maps in the early days, and what I've been doing with them recently, including:
* Covid as a forcing function
* The impact of Inertia / Apex Predator complacency
* How Glasswall OpenSource is using Wardley Maps
* Cell-based organisational structures with OSOM
* How we're helping Simon's ongoing research on Doctrine
* GCATI's effort to introduce Mapping Standards
* Some links between Cynefin & Wardley Maps
Oh, and I've snuck into the Appendix something on Mapping the UN's Sustainability Development Goals.
Enjoy! :-)
13. VUCA
Volatility: the nature and dynamics of change, and the nature and speed of
change forces and change catalysts.
Uncertainty: the lack of predictability, the prospects for surprise, and the sense of
awareness and understanding of issues and events.
Complexity: the multiplex of forces, the confounding of issues, no cause-and-effect
chain and confusion that surrounds organization.
Ambiguity: the haziness of reality, the potential for misreads, and the mixed
meanings of conditions; cause-and-effect confusion.
“
14.
15.
16. Evolution
ValueChainvisibleinvisible
Genesis Custom Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility)
uncharted industrialised
Modal
Digital’s
Value
Chain
Modal’s
Customer
E-commerce Site
E-commerce
Consulting
Hosting
(eg: AWS,
Azure,
Google
Cloud)
E-commerce
Framework
User Interface
Customisations
Third Party
Integrations
User Experience
& Interface
Design
Bespoke
Customisations
Technical
Support
Remote-first
workforce
Remote-first
customers
18. Evolution
ValueChainvisibleinvisible
Genesis Custom Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility)
uncharted industrialised
Modal’s
Customer
E-commerce Site
E-commerce
Platform as a
Service
(eg: SFCC,
Shopify)
competition
standards
competition
& standards
Hosting
(eg: AWS,
Azure,
Google
Cloud)
E-commerce
Framework
User Interface
Customisations
future
competitionThird Party
Integrations
User Experience
& Interface
Design
product
add-onsBespoke
Customisations
E-commerce
Consulting
Technical
Support
Modal
Digital’s
Value
Chain
Already
under
threat!
Inertia
19.
20. Evolution
ValueChainvisibleinvisible
Genesis Custom Product (+ rental) Commodity (+ utility)
uncharted industrialised
Modal’s
Customer
E-commerce Site
E-commerce
Platform as a
Service
(eg: SFCC,
Shopify)
Hosting
(eg: AWS,
Azure,
Google
Cloud)
E-commerce
Framework
User Interface
Customisations
Third Party
Integrations
User Experience
& Interface
Design
Bespoke
Customisations
E-commerce
Consulting
Technical
Support
Modal
Digital’s
Value
Chain
COVID-19
forcing
function
✘
✘
25. A high level of
situational awareness
will help us to
survive.
26. ValueChainvisibleinvisible
uncharted industrialisedEvolution
Commodity
(+ utility)
Custom Built Product
(+ rental)
Genesis
Emerging GoodNovel Best
K8s Core
Practice
Activity
k8
K8s-as-a-Service
(Managed)
1 Glasswall Rebuild (CDR)
On-premise
(Compute)
Public cloud
(Compute)
K8s Native
ICAP Server
Walled Gardens,
incompatible features
K8s
portability, security,
performance
GW Rebuild
ICAP Service
Sources:
● Kubernetes-as-a-Service: EKS vs. AKS vs. GKE (feature comparison)
● Provider-Managed vs. Self-Managed Kubernetes: pro’s & con’s.
● Why running your own Kubernetes could be a terrible idea (caveat: 2018)
● Kubermatic KubeOne: automate cluster ops on cloud, on-prem, edge, & IoT envs.
● Kubernetes Security 101: Risks and 29 Best Practices.
● Deploying RabbitMQ to Kubernetes: “bit like a jigsaw puzzle” = Custom
● 7 Best Jenkins Hosting Platform: CI/CD-as-a-Service
● MinIO Subscription Pricing: “MinIO does not operate a hosted object storage service” = Product
Cluster lifecycle
management
Containerised
Applications
Market Perception of K8s Native
Many organisations deploy and manage their own K8s
Clusters. It’s becoming more common for companies
to deploy on Managed Kubernetes clusters like AKS,
EKS & GKA. This will enable more K8s Native apps,
and tools like knative will help accelerate this.
Portability (between cloud providers, and to on-
premise environments), performance, and security are
holding Glasswall back from using Managed K8s-as-
a-Service.
knative
K8s image &
cluster templates
Hosted K8s
Glasswall
Dev + Ops
Storage
Message
Queue
Is a cluster
template even a
thing?
CI/CD
K8s Message Queue
(eg: RMQ)
Todo: What is K8s
Native Replacing?
is it worth adding Glasswall’s
current practice to this map?
K8s Local Storage
(eg: Min.IO)
K8s Image
Repo
Is CI/CD part of
Release Mgmt
team?
K8s Core
Service Team
K8s Strategy
I want to commoditise the K8s Practice @ Glasswall.
@Dinis: What about:
I want to commoditise a Safe K8s Native practice
around the globe, making it easier to build secure &
performant apps on K8s, while maintaining ease of
portability to serve customers in every vendor’s K8s-
as-a-Service clouds: public & on-premise.
Dinis (CTO)
3 Safe Content
30. Visibility
Glasswall
Customer
Content Consumer,
Traffic Generator
4GW CDR Proxy
1 GW CDR
Reverse Proxy
(eg: squid)
Antivirus
software
GW ICAP Server
GW ICAP service
3 Content
Safe Content
Message
Queue service
Storage
service
Logging
service
Container
service
Compute service
(VMs)
K8-10k-pods
K8 Proxy Rebuild
31. ValueChainvisibleinvisible
uncharted industrialisedEvolution
Commodity
(+ utility)
Custom Built Product
(+ rental)
Genesis
Traffic Generator
Practice
Activity
Market Perception: Load Test
● Blazemeter offers SaaS & On-Prem
● Gatling Frontline SaaS / On-Prem
● k6 SaaS (manual on-prem)
● Likely more, market is mature
2
Validate Safety
& Performance
User
Simulation
Safety Test
Test
Scenarios
GW Testers /
Independent
Validator
Load
Test
Data
visualisation
Public
Cloud
On-premise
Glasswall
Customer
Results
Results
Malware validation
(Glasswall Rebuild API)
Question: Safety Test
Do any existing products offer malware,
security, and privacy functional tests? If so,
can they be used?
Do any other Privacy & Security
considerations need taking into account?
Safety
Private. Secure.
(no malware)
3
Test
Content
K8s Core
K8s Native
K8s
K8s File
Storage
Load
Test
Analyse
Results
Malware Test
Cases
Browser
Automation
800k Users
Concurrently
Threat Modelling
Security testing
(owasp Zap)
Pen. Test
Load Test
Framework
JMeterk6 Gatling
33. Organised Services
VS
Functional Hierarchy
Stance Consulting
Service
Manager
design, delivery,
operations,
finance,
...
Container Service
Service
Owner
Executive
strategy, governance
Glasswall
Rebuild
Service
ICAP Proxy Service
Sub-teams as
needed
Service
Contract
Compute Service
Service
Mandates
37. Visibility Government: A Hierarchy of Needs
A society
Simplify group
decision making
/ Manage shared
resources
Government
Elections
Survive / Propagate
Protect
Citizens
Parliament
Health
Business
Environment Energy
Education
International
Development
International
Trade
Transport
Justice Police
Law
Rules
?
Blue = UK Ministry
Physical constraints
Defence
Internal threat
External threat
Work &
Pensions
Feedback
loop
Survive /
Propagate
Economy
Culture
PhysicalDigital
Intelligence
Policy
Media
Sport
Practice
Activity
Protect
System
Curate
Citizens
Values &
beliefs
Central Bank
Treasury
Tax & Excise
Covid is exposing gap in
government & societal
values & beliefs
Doctrine
Andy ZmolekDr Jacqui Taylor Mark McCann
38. Commodity
(+ utility)
Custom Built Product
(+ rental)
Genesis
Health: Digital Patient Records
Open source?
Med Tech Routine
Health Care Experimental Surgery, etc. Routine
Data sources:
● UCLH: Electronic Health Record System (EHRS),
● Electronic Health Records (product) | OpenEMR
● Secure and Trustable Electronic Medical Records Sharing using Blockchain
● RCP: Standards for the clinical structure and content of patient records,
● NHS on cloud services | NHS Digital Vision
● Electronic health records – local and national initiatives
Medical
Records
Use Open EMR
Standards
Patient
Healthcare
Provider
Digitisation of
old records
Data Analysts
(eg: ONS, App Developers, etc)
Health Data
Insights
Funding
Accounting
What forces are holding back evolution?
+Better health outcomes,
- Lower cost
Who owns the data?
● GDPR: the patient
● But do they really? Doesn’t
feel like it in practice.
Who sets the standards?
● Whoever gets there 1st?
Lack of coherent IT strategy
Need to build and maintain public trust
Commercial arrangements
Complex Multiple IT systems
Multiple data formats
Volume of old records
Risk-averse culture
Incorporate patient
history into treatment
plan
Electronic
Medical
Records
Security
Cybersecurity
EMR Data
Format
Compute &
storage
Fear, Cost, Skills, Regulatory??
cloud
EMR Portal
Remote
Access
COVID-19
Security,
devices, Infra,
internet
Health ROI:
funding decisions
Storage &
Retrieval
Eg: Open EMR
??? plain inertia ???
Eg: Medical Chain
blockchain
Own my Data
LIMS
Certification
Missing need:
Covid-19: clinical need for threat detection
New legislation was just released!
Doctrine
39. ValueChainvisibleinvisible
uncharted industrialisedEvolution
Commodity
(+ utility)
Custom Built Product
(+ rental)
Genesis
Parked for next time
Novel Practice Emerging Practice Good Practice Best Practice
User
Check Symptoms:
Figure out what’s wrong
Health - Covid- Patient Journey shifts
Self-assessment &
referral
Public Health Education
→ Society
Medical Knowledge
base
Multidisciplinary
care
Localised decision making
Feel poorly Lookup The Symptoms Take Covid Test Get Results Discharge
Internet / tel
Reliable source
(google, nhs, 111)
Covid Symptoms AdultsChildren
Rapid evolution (weeks)
Transportation
Drive-thru test Home test
Test
Test kit
Communicate
Results
Covid+ guidance
NHS Accepting
Self-administered
test data
Built-in protection
against poor test
procedure
Covid
Reducing skill
required to
administer tests.
Higher tolerance
to risk
Covid Test App
(NHS)
Bypassing existing
GP journey
Covid
Rapid evolution due
to Covid
Doctrine
40. Video consultations
with specialists
(saves hospital admin
& patient travel time)
LockdownCovid-19
Stroke/Heart Surgery
Patient Journey
(current)
Diagnosis Prep for Elective Surgery
Investigate: Irregular
symptoms of stroke.
1.5 years of testing.
Bubble test pointed to
elective heart surgery
Consultation
Scan to determine detailed surgery
plan (cancelled)
Self-isolated when Covid discovered.
Related journey: video consultations with
surgeon & staff.
Process
Problems
Surgery was postponed due to
Covid-19.
Scan was cancelled.
Months of additional waiting.
Patient
Experience
Elective Surgery
Surgery scheduled (phone).
Surgery attempted, but aborted as surgeon
encountered something they did not expect.
Priority of surgery confirmed!
Scan rescheduled & performed.
Must wear mask, have to be alone.
Patient was placed at unnecessary risk, due to
lack of due process (eg: scan not performed
first). Patient wasn’t fully informed of the risk.
Months of additional waiting.
Aftercare
Figure out why I had a
stroke
Patient
Goals
Electronic Patient Record
System
used by health
professionals & patients to
share test results & data
Covered elsewhere:
Patients do their own
sense-making.
Challenging doctors more.
Consult GP & pharmacies
more.
Fix problem
Most tests shed no
light on the issue.
Most time spent
waiting to see a
specialist.
TBC
Medium @ @
@
Emerging Practice
New perspective on Risk
Covid forcing changes in
routine pathways. Some
good some bad. Gathering
data. (eg: AI Covid
detection)
Doctrine
41. What’s the NHS
responsibility?
Impact of
COVID-19
People Want to
participate in
discourse/Politics
More Remote
Consultations
Healthcare has
become even more
politicised
Non-essential
services postponed
(elective surgery)
Reallocated
resources to focus
on Covid
NHS staff 'gagged'
over covid shortages
(feedback outside official
channels)
Fake news about
COVID
How it spreads, it’s not
dangerous, it’s a
conspiracy, etc.
Does NHS have a
duty of transparency,
feedback loops, &
addressing issues?
Equitable access?
Choice? Agreed ways of
working?
Improved Home
diagnosis
Technology
Balance between:
Equitable & free
access & Protecting
rights of others?
Legend
Impact
examples
link to values
New Capabilities
Established (National
Institute for Health
Protection)
Spotlights issues
Undermined our
view of risk.
Uncovered unseen
issues
Commitment to
Quality of Care
Blood pressure,
diabetes, heart
rate, Cholesterol
DNA, oximeter, etc
Proactive,
Responsive to
public health
Public Health, Connect &
Trace, Emerging threat
detection, new practices, pre-
active, Streamlined reporting
structure)
Everyone Counts
New view of Risk, Lack of
data to price risk, quality of
data impacts coverage
available
How to provide for domestic
abuse? Now we know an
affected family costs £250k.
Created a new patient pathways
& arena of care that crosses
other departments (eg: DoE).
Politics is not attractive
proposition. Negative
connotations
Lack of coherent measurement.
Supply chain.
Approvals mechanism bureaucracy.
Equitable access.
Democracy (eg: accountability)
Quality of care.
Opportunity to
improve practice
Local focus on provision of care
(matches social care).
Improve feedback mechanism (eg:
measurement).
Spin up MoD to help
provide care. New
core capability.
Innovate by
combining different
departments
Apply systems
thinking & mapping
to solve issues from
patient POV
Opportunity to change
social view of risk - take
a bet, design for
resilience.
Raised
expectations
Health Care is now top
priority for everyone
Renewed
Commitment to
Quality of Care in
quantitative way
everyone counts
Everyone Counts
Doctrine
50. Wardley Mapping the UN SDGs
Overview
We are creating a set of Wardley Maps for each of the UN’s 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) to provide insights to governments, organisations, and
citizens around strategies for achieving each SDG. Our goal is to spark
discussions that result in a better and wider understanding of the social,
corporate and political needs behind each SDG, and critically, the corresponding
changes required in the way value is delivered by our organisations and
governments to achieve the SDG.
To accomplish this, we’ll be organising a series of virtual workshops to examine a
single SDG in a specific geographic context. We are looking for both scientific
experts, and government & business stakeholders to join us to make this a reality.
Why Wardley Maps?
Wardley maps are an effective way of exploring user needs, value chains, the
evolution of practice & technology, and strategies. They are ideal for examining
SDGs as they will allow us to consider multiple perspectives at different levels of
granularity (eg: macro → meso → micro → nano), capital flows, impediments, and
strategic plays. They will also serve as a key link between science, business, and
governance by creating active dialogue, developing a common language, and
highlighting practical actions that can be taken.
Figure 1: example Wardley Map from the
UN Global Platform Handbook on IT Strategy
How can you help?
You can help by joining a working group, and contributing your expertise!
Let us know you’re interested by filling out this form:
https://forms.gle/LyFfddr5K8K7BSR89
--
Steve Purkis <steve@complex-adaptive.com> @spurkis
Mark Craddock <mark@gcati.org> @mcraddock
#WardleyMaps4SDGs
51. Complementary techniques
● Customer & User Journey maps. UX research.
● Cynefin & Complexity Thinking. SenseMaker.
● Systems Thinking.
● XP, Lean Kanban, Scrum, Prince2, PMP, ITIL, 6 Sigma, etc.
● PESTLE.
● Business model canvas.
● Porter’s 5 “Forces” & Value Chain (eg: Stage IV, manufacturing bias).
● Market research.
● Staying informed (eg: reading).
● Data visualisation.
Etc. etc. etc.
52. They are not enough on their own.
They don’t make observations for you.
They don’t conduct market research for you.
They don’t do your finances, engineering or marketing.
They don’t prevent LVRMs or HiPPOs from overpowering discussions.
They don’t replace emotional intelligence & diversity.
They don’t prevent unintended consequences.
Editor's Notes
By now, many of you know the Fotango story.
Remember? Online Photos? Zimki, the world’s first PaaS?
If you’re new to all this, Simon talks about it a lot in his book on value chain mapping.
Briefly, Zimki was this crazy idea of a “Platform as a Service” that used JavaScript on the server side!
The idea is you’d only pay for the compute & storage you actually used, a bit like “utility computing”.
Revolutionary, eh?
Ok, come on, remember this was 2006. Before serverless, Node.JS, Docker, and all that malarkey.
(Heck, it was before the term “Dev Ops” was coined)
now it's all normal
Ok, so the reason you’ve never heard of Zimki before is because:
it was shut down by it’s parent company, just as it was about to make a key strategic play:
open sourcing the platform to create standards that would attract others to adopt it.
And result in an entirely new marketplace.
Where Zimki would have a small piece of a much bigger pie.
What’s not to like about that?
But hold on, that’s a pretty risky idea!!
Just think about it:
It might not work! Who’s to say others will use it?
And besides, it’s not core to the company’s Online Photo business.
So they shouldn’t be messing around with this stuff.
So, yeah:
pulling the plug was a good decision, right?
This is old news.
Simon’s done this story to death. Why am I repeating it?
[Target: 2 min]
Because it’s also my story.
I used to work with Simon & James, the creators of Wardley Maps, at Fotango back in 2006.
So, Wardley Maps have a personal connection for me.
Those maps… that strategy… and a brilliant team culture (early version of Doctrine?)
They’re the reasons I joined Fotango to head up the Dev team.
While it’s unfortunate Zimki, a company with billion dollar potential, was shut down prematurely…
I take comfort that Canon let me walk out the door with Bella, the yak.
The kids love it.
Oh, and Wardley Mapping has also served me well over the years.
[target: 3 min]
These days, I run a small consultancy that helps organisations develop situational awareness to navigate complexity.
There’s certainly been plenty of that going around lately!
The chaos & complexity of recent events is changing the landscape our organisations operate in.
We live in unprecedented times!
Or do we?
I just completed an Executive MBA (think of me what you will),
Besides being surprised at how excellent the professors were,
and the diversity & talent of my cohort
I was also surprised how many time this word was mentioned.
Every single class.
I thought it was a new buzz word.
But the term “VUCA” was introduced in 1987 by Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus!
If you think back 30 years ago… well, we lived in unprecedented times then as well.
That’s not to say that current events don’t have an impact.
They absolutely do.
Take covid…
Companies like Modal, an Ecommerce Solutions Integrator
that, on the surface, looked well-equipped to weather the storm
(But underneath it all, were actually suffering without really knowing why)
When you map, you realise they are suffering from inertia.
Modal resisted the shift to platforms. Why?
Successful business
Using PaaS means lower revenues: No hosting or support? Greatly reduced need for bespoke?
What will we do with the capability we’ve built up?
These market shifts had early signals in 2015, and became obvious in 2016.
Coincidentally, that was the same year Modal started experiencing issues.
Now, they’ve experienced the Covid forcing function.
Accelerating the change.
Companies still need to sell
But they’re also not looking to spend a lot
It’s loss mitigation behaviour, and the platforms offer a better deal
In many cases, organisations are being forced over the cliff of complacency
The unfortunate ones go extinct,
The lucky ones take quick action to stop the bleeding.
And find themselves in a complex situation they don’t fully understand.
The sensible ones cast about with multiple probes that may:
Prompt exaptation: reusing existing capabilities for things they weren’t really meant for, like dinosaurs did with feathers (as Liz Keoh points out)
Or they may spark a new process of adaptation. Selecting for a function.
------------------
exaptation: reusing capabilities for purposes they weren’t really planned for
adaptation: produced by natural selection for its current function
Exaptation can be the quickest route to recovery, and Wardley Maps can help us do that.
They can help us breakdown our capabilities to look for novel uses, and recombine them into new products & services.
I like to think of each map as a coherent probe that can used to find new opportunities.
As Winston Churchill famously said (in another unprecedented time) while working to form the UN:
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”
source: https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/never-waste-a-good-water-crisis/
[target: 6 min]
I’d argue that we need situational awareness to survive.
Either that, or dumb luck.
Ideally both :-)
Speaking of opportunities,
I’m working with the Exec team at Glasswall, a content security company.
They’ve recognised that the Covid forcing function would actually cause an increase in demand for their services.
Ultimately, it meant spinning up an entirely new Open Source arm to complement their internal team.
You can see here how we’re using maps to explore ideas around technical strategy.
Using Kubernetes ("K8s") containers to scale up their Content Disarm & Rebuild application.
Here they've hit portability, security and performance barriers in existing Managed K8s
It’s great when they become the basis for a discussion, like this.
So we can rule out some ideas, and we bounce around new ideas. This is how you develop a common understanding.
The act of mapping has helped some teams understand & communicate their purpose.
As well as communicating lifecycle stages, like you can see with the traffic lighting system here.
It’s helped others express the architecture
And it’s helped capture important questions on technical decisions being made.
Like should we Insource / Outsource?
One thing I love about maps is that they also allow us to consider alternative, more effective organisational structures.
I’ve partnered up with James Duncan’s company, Stance Consulting, to look at this in Glasswall’s context.
Here, you’re looking a current map of Glasswall.
You’re also looking at Glasswall OpenSource’s new operating model, which we’ve just started introducing to improve the effectiveness of the organisation.
It’s based on Stance’s “Organised Services Operating Model”.
Rather than using a classic functional hierarchy
OSOM breaks up organisations into cells that deliver a Service
Each cell has a contract which details the services provided, and a service level agreement
This doubles as a fitness function to evaluate performance of the service
The Executive decides which services to spin up, which to spin down.
It also governs via mandates, rather than dictats
This is all based on Wardley Maps: in fact, it’s derived from Simon’s Universal Doctrine.
[target: 9 min]
Speaking of Doctrine…
You know, those ~30 principles that are universally useful regardless of your context
Well, they’re also ~10 years old now.
And there's a chance more have emerged
To improve how organisations work, we've got to keep these universal principles up-to-date.
For my business, this map of Simon’s is pretty important. Yes, it’s a few years old, but still fairly accurate.
You can see that Simon expects Doctrine to evolve
Earlier this year, Simon announced a broad study to explore the evolution of Doctrine, and update Wardley Maps with the result.
He was looking for volunteers, so I signed up and joined the Government Working Group, to help look for patterns.
We started by looking at why governments exist. It boils down to:
simplifying group decisions,
managing shared resources,
And representing the shared values & beliefs of a society.
Oh, and surviving and propagating itself.
Then we looked at the impact of some forcing functions, like Covid.
There’s too much detail to absorb in a short talk,
But the important thing to remember is we’re looking for new universally good practice as candidates for Doctrine.
We noticed a trend around being Remote. (no big surprise there!)
Maybe:
* Distributed Cognition
* Distributed Resources
are new Doctrine?
We’ve also noticed changes around tolerance to Risk.
It’s worth pointing out that Wardley Maps aren’t the only form of maps that are useful.
(Again, you see this theme of new perspectives on Risk. It’s come up in a few places.)
As you can see, we came up with a lot of stuff… If you’re interested in digging into this, I’d recommend watching Dr Jacqui Taylor’s talk on Government.
I also teach a lot of people how to map, and learning curve can be an issue
so anything we can do to either:
improve how we teach, or
Increase the general level of awareness & understanding of maps
will make my life easier.
Over the summer, I’ve gotten involved in an effort lead by Mark @ GCATI to create training & certification standards.
Even if we just get Awareness & Foundation level sorted, we’ll be a long way towards spreading a consistently good adoption of maps.
[Target: 12 min]
Finally, I’m also exploring the links between Wardley Maps & Cynefin
Simon & Dave have already noted that Apex Predator Theory & Inertia have a lot in common
I love the fractal nature of both Cynefin and Wardly maps…
I’m starting to use Maps as coherent Probes
Thinking about integrating Ritual Dissent into mapping workshops
Finally, I’m looking at using SenseMaker to gauge PST affiliation & and run Doctrine evaluation with micro narratives instead of surveys
It’s easy to get tired of the same survey over & over
But when you tell your own story, you become much more engaged