Wardley Mapping

Wardley Mapping is a method for visualizing strategy, pioneered by Simon Wardley. By mapping user needs, value chains, and the evolution of components, it gives teams a shared language for situational awareness — seeing the landscape before choosing a move.

Wardley's open artifacts and strategic vocabulary have enabled an ecosystem of practitioners, tools, and innovation built atop his work. A Wardley map makes strategy visible: start with the user need, connect the activities that create value, place each component by evolution, then choose gameplay based on the landscape in front of you.

LLM image prompt: Create a clean product-style illustration for Wardley mapping that shows a user need at the top connected downward through a value stream of capabilities, activities, and systems. Use a white background, slate labels, thin connecting lines, and restrained accent colors. No logos, no people, no decorative gradients.

1. Value Stream Connections

Show how value is created

Start with a user need. Connect the activities, capabilities, data, and systems that make that need possible.

LLM image prompt: Create a clean instructional illustration for Wardley mapping evolution. Show several connected map components positioned on a left-to-right axis labeled Genesis, Custom Built, Product, and Commodity. Emphasize movement from uncertainty to ubiquity with subtle arrows. Use a white background, slate typography, and restrained teal and amber accents.

2. Evolution

Place each component by maturity

Components move from novel and uncertain toward standard, common, and industrialized. Their position changes how you should treat them.

LLM image prompt: Create a clean strategic gameplay illustration for Wardley mapping. Show a simple map with highlighted opportunities such as outsource commodity, build differentiation, remove bottleneck, and defend user experience. Use small callout tags, calm business-tool styling, white background, and restrained blue, green, and amber accents.

3. Gameplay

Decide what to do next

Use the map to pick moves: outsource commodities, invest in differentiation, remove constraints, or change the terrain.

Explore gameplay Open example map

An introduction

An introduction to Wardley value chain mapping

gardeviance.org

Video · GOTO 2018

Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones

youtube.com

From Here to There and Back Again

youtube.com