Exploring the map – Wardley Maps

Wardley’s take on riding the diffusion or understand curve:

The uncharted space is where no-one knows what is wanted which forces us to explore and experiment. Change is the norm here and any method that you use must enable and reduce the cost of change. In this part of the map, I tend to use an Agile approach that has been cut right back to the core principles, a very lightweight version of XP or SCRUM.

Of course, as a component evolves and we start to understand it more then our focus changes. Sometime during the stage of custom built we switch and start to think about creating a product. Whilst we may continue to use underlying techniques such as XP or SCRUM, our focus is now on reducing waste, improving measurements, learning and creating that first minimal viable product. We start to add artefacts to our methodology and the activity has more permanence about it as it undergoes this transition. We’ve stopped exploring the uncharted space and started concentrating on what we’ve found. Today, Lean tends to rule the waves here though back in 2005 we were struggling to find something appropriate. The component however will continue to evolve becoming more widespread and defined as it approaches the domain of industrialised volume operations. Our focus again switches but this time to mass production of good enough which means reducing deviation. At this point, Six Sigma along with formalised frameworks such as ITIL then start to rule the waves. Any significant system will have components at different stages of evolution. At any one moment in time, there is no single method that will fit all. medium.com/wardleyma…