How to read a Wardley Map
A one-page primer on the strategy map serious CTOs use to decide what to build, buy, or outsource, with an annotated example you can read in a minute.
Simon Wardley (CC BY-SA)
A Wardley Map is the strategy tool serious CTOs quietly swear by. It plots your system two ways at once: up the side, how visible each piece is to the customer; across the bottom, how evolved it is, from a brand-new idea (genesis) to a boring utility you just plug into. Once you can see it, the build-buy-rent calls get obvious.
- User
- Build (your edge / custom)
- Differentiator
- Buy (product)
- Rent (commodity / utility)
Anchor at the top with the user and what they need. Hang the components below in a chain, each thing depends on the things beneath it. Then place each component left-to-right by how evolved it is. The move is almost always the same: build the things on the left (novel, your edge), buy or rent the things on the right (commodity, solved). You don’t run your own power station; you plug into the grid and spend your genius on the business.
Wardley Mapping was created by Simon Wardley and released under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA). This is a short primer, not the full method, the real power comes from mapping your system and watching where the pieces are drifting.
Wardley Mapping was created by Simon Wardley and is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0). This primer is a derivative and is offered under the same terms, with attribution.
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