Wardley Mapping DoctrineSelected Principles by Phase
Doctrine is the set of principles Simon Wardley considers useful to almost any organisation, whatever its context. He groups them into four phases, each building on the one before, and six categories: communication, development, learning, operations, leading, and structure. Below are selected principles from each phase, with the category each belongs to. The full set is in the Body of Knowledge.
Where Doctrine Fits
Climatic patterns are the changes that affect your landscape whatever you do. Gameplay is what you choose to do in a particular context. Doctrine is neither: it is how you organise yourself so that you can see the landscape clearly and act on it well. Start with Phase I. The later phases depend on the earlier ones, and there is little point trying to exploit the landscape if you don't yet know who your users are.
Phase I: Stop Self-Harm
The basics. Without them, an organisation tends to waste effort, duplicate work, and build things nobody needs. These are all the Phase I principles.
Use a Common Language
Communication — Collaboration needs a shared way of describing the landscape. A map gives people with different skills one picture to point at and argue over.
Challenge Assumptions
Communication — A map makes assumptions visible, so invite people to question it. The aim is a better map, not winning the argument.
Focus on High Situational Awareness
Communication — Understand the landscape you are competing in before you decide what to do. The less a situation surprises you, the better your awareness.
Know Your Users
Development — Be clear who your users are. Customers, shareholders, regulators, and staff can all be users, and they need different things.
Focus on User Needs
Development — User needs are the anchor of every map. Meet your own needs by meeting theirs.
Remove Bias and Duplication
Development — Compare maps across teams to find the same thing being built or bought several times over, or treated differently in different places.
Use Appropriate Methods
Development — Match the method to the stage of evolution: Agile for the uncharted, Lean in the middle, and Six Sigma for the industrialised. A large system will need all three at once.
Use a Systematic Mechanism of Learning
Learning — Use mapping to learn climatic patterns, doctrine, and gameplay, not just to build a shared picture. Have a bias towards data.
Think Small (Details)
Operations — Know the details of what you run. Break large landscapes into small pieces that you can understand, and contract for, separately.
Phase II: Becoming More Context Aware
With the basics in place, use what your maps show you to work faster and with less waste.
Be Transparent
Communication — Have a bias towards openness. Share your maps so that others can add what they know and point out what you have missed.
Be Pragmatic
Development — If a component you need already exists, use it rather than building your own. Ask for a good reason whenever someone wants to depart from that.
Think Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant (FIRE)
Development — Break large systems into small parts, reuse inexpensive components, set tight limits on budget and time, and keep designs simple.
A Bias Towards Action
Learning — Don't wait for a perfect map. The landscape keeps changing, and you learn more by acting than by polishing.
Strategy Is Iterative Not Linear
Leading — Work in short cycles and adjust as the landscape changes. Expect a direction and steady improvement, not a fixed plan.
Manage Failure
Operations — Use your map to see what would be affected if a component failed, and reduce the risk by distributing systems and designing for failure.
Manage Inertia
Operations — Work out where resistance to change will come from, and why, before you meet it. A map helps people see their own inertia.
Think Aptitude and Attitude
Structure — People differ in their skills (aptitude, such as finance or engineering) and in how they like to work (attitude: pioneer, settler, or town planner). Both matter when you build teams.
Distribute Power and Decision Making
Structure — Move decisions away from the centre, including away from yourself, to the people closest to them.
Phase III: Better for Less
These principles are mostly about leadership and raising the bar: getting more from the resources you have.
Think Big
Leading — The work depends on attention to detail, but direction doesn't. When you set a purpose and inspire others, think big.
Strategy Is Complex
Leading — Expect uncertainty, emerging patterns, and surprises. You can't plan the future, so what counts is how well you prepare and adapt.
Be Humble
Leading — Listen, be selfless, and have fortitude. Inspire people by who you are and what you do, and avoid arrogance.
Optimise Flow
Operations — Capital flows through a map as money, information, risk, and social capital. Find the bottlenecks and remove them.
Set Exceptional Standards
Operations — Don't settle for matching your competitors or beating them slightly. Set the bar by what is possible, not by what they do.
Provide Purpose, Mastery, and Autonomy
Structure — Give people a purpose, room to build mastery in their area, and the freedom to act.
Phase IV: Continuously Evolving
The final phase treats change as permanent and builds an organisation that adapts without constant restructuring. These are all the Phase IV principles.
Exploit the Landscape
Leading — The landscape often offers force multipliers. Use them, and if you choose not to, make that a conscious choice.
There Is No Core
Leading — Whatever feels core to your business today will evolve. Don't build your organisation on the idea that anything is permanent.
Listen to Your Ecosystems
Learning — Partners and the companies that build on what you provide can act as sensing engines for future change. Pay attention to what they do.
Design for Constant Evolution
Structure — Build an organisation that copes with continual change in the landscape, so that change flows through it without constant restructuring.
There Is No One Culture
Structure — An organisation that wants to last has to handle discovery, industrialisation, and the move between them. That takes several cultures, not one.
Assessing Your Doctrine
Go through the principles phase by phase and ask honestly whether your organisation follows each one. Fix gaps in Phase I first, because the later phases build on it. Repeat the assessment from time to time to see whether you are improving.
Related
Sources
- Adapted from Simon Wardley, Wardley Maps, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Material adapted from these sources is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.