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Wardley Mapping With Ben Mosior
Links:
- Simon Wardley's book on Wardley Mapping
- Simon Wardley - @swardley (Twitter)
- Learn Wardley Mapping - Ben Mosior's site on... Learning Wardley Mapping.
- Ben Mosior: @hiredthought (Twitter). Site: Hired Thought
- Tatianna Mac - @TatianaTMac (Twitter)
- Tatianna's work on helping white dudes learn about systemic racism, how to recognize it, and what to do about it: "White Guyde to the Galaxy".
- Tatianna Mac also wrote a white woman focused guide, called "Save the Tears: White Woman's Guide".
Please support Black Lives Matter in any way that you can.
Episode Transcript (Automated Transcript via @otter_ai)
George Stocker 0:00
Welcome to the built better software podcast podcast for software leaders who want to enable their teams to build better software. I'm your host George Stocker. Today, I'm joined by guest, Ben Mosher to talk about wardley mapping, then Welcome to the show.
Ben Mosior 0:16
Thanks for having me, George.
George Stocker 0:18
For folks who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Ben Mosior 0:25
Well, my name is Ben Mosier. I do a little bit of this and that I kind of jokingly call myself a methodology whisperer, which roughly translates to God, I wish I had a job title because I don't know how to describe myself. But you know, roughly that means I take these methods that people are using for thinking that are relatively unknown, but quite innovative. And then I try to turn them into everyday tools. So for the mapping is one of those endeavors. There are others but yeah, that's that's what I do. I run workshops and things like that and Build resources for people to learn.
George Stocker 1:02
Now for people who are new to wardley mapping, what is it?
Ben Mosior 1:07
Yeah, wardley mapping is a strategic thinking tool. I like to think of it as like a knowledge creation tool that enables action. It was invented by this lovely old man who lives in a swamp by the name of Simon wardley. He lives in UK. And he created this method after quite an extensive bit of research into what I would basically point out as being kind of fundamental patterns of capitalism, or the mapping the practice is basically three things. It's first and foremost a visual communication method. It's about kind of creating an artifact that we can challenge and have a conversation around. That's visual. And the second thing is, it's a body of research around these patterns of supply and demand competition, you know, how does capitalism big work, how do things evolve. And then the final thing is a strategic thinking process that kind of ties both those things together in order to enable you to make new decisions based on seeing a kind of strategic landscape that most will not be able to see. So it's a knowledge creation tool in order to enable you to take action.
George Stocker 2:24
Okay, and now with wardley mapping when when you start out with it, what are you mapping?
Ben Mosior 2:31
Yeah, so when you make a wardley map, what you're focusing on are things like, you know, what is the system that you're a part of, and you can have to make some curatorial decisions about how how some curatorial decisions about what scope to pay attention to, but you could say map of business, or you can map a market. You could even map yourself as an individual But roughly what you're doing is focusing on what is the system? What is its parts? How do they relate together? And then you do two things. You think about how the system produces value for somebody, some user. And then you also think about how those parts are changing under the pressures of supply and demand competition, which is capitalism. So what is the system? How is it changing? How does it produce value for users? And is basically creates a way for you to interact meaningfully with the world by modeling it. We can get into more of what that actually looks like. But it's not as complicated or weird as it sounds. It's literally just what are the parts? You know, what do they like? And how should we treat those parts? How should we have intent with respect to each of those parts?
George Stocker 3:51
Now, how do you spend your days with wardley mapping?
Ben Mosior 3:55
So I spend time with teams doing strategic kind of training. assizes, where what we'll do is we'll kind of go through the basics of wardley mapping, we'll apply doctrinal principles about, you know, what you ought to do as individuals in the organization, how to think about, basically, what's it What's a universal principle that you can apply to the work that you're doing? That that value that you all kind of share. And then also thinking about what Simon calls climatic patterns, which is basically like, what what is relatively predictable about capitalism that if we only took the time to notice, we could actually use that to anticipate change that's occurring in the wider market. And then like finally just thinking about how to go about strategic thinking, I get more energized by the thought of getting into kind of like, what what is the you're doing George, like with this podcast and what, what are the big questions you're trying to answer? And then you and I riffing off of that, given the context of what I do, and Given the context of mapping and how I think about those things, I feel like a lot of energy coming out of that kind of conversation, and kind of nodding toward the mapping without having to like get big make it the focus so much, if that knows,
George Stocker 5:14
no, I really like what you said. And that's, that's key is that, you? I, I believe that we, as software developers, and as an as a practice, software development itself is still in its infancy. You look at you look at construction, and they have building codes and building codes and building codes. They can tell you to a tee, how much a bridge will cost and how, what it can hold. You know, who's it for? What does it does, and with software development, we can barely tell you how long a little feature will take. And that's after 16 years of doing it. And then we're
Ben Mosior 5:55
still having fights about about like whether or not estimates are a valid thing to do.
George Stocker 6:00
Exactly what can you imagine? And you're to the point about building? Can you imagine if the building codes were like, yeah, you don't need blueprints. But we built software every day without blueprints without specifications. And we actively derived teams that do produce specifications that do produce tests in the form of test driven development. Now, what I focus on is I focus on I want every software team out there to know about test driven development. And I want to make it accessible for all software developers to a point that it becomes, I believe, it can become the standard way of developing software. Now I believe that we have we have taught it incorrectly. We have glossed over the hard parts. And we have, you know, over simplified it and not gone to, when you would use it, how you'd use it, why you'd ...
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By George StockerLinks:
- Simon Wardley's book on Wardley Mapping
- Simon Wardley - @swardley (Twitter)
- Learn Wardley Mapping - Ben Mosior's site on... Learning Wardley Mapping.
- Ben Mosior: @hiredthought (Twitter). Site: Hired Thought
- Tatianna Mac - @TatianaTMac (Twitter)
- Tatianna's work on helping white dudes learn about systemic racism, how to recognize it, and what to do about it: "White Guyde to the Galaxy".
- Tatianna Mac also wrote a white woman focused guide, called "Save the Tears: White Woman's Guide".
Please support Black Lives Matter in any way that you can.
Episode Transcript (Automated Transcript via @otter_ai)
George Stocker 0:00
Welcome to the built better software podcast podcast for software leaders who want to enable their teams to build better software. I'm your host George Stocker. Today, I'm joined by guest, Ben Mosher to talk about wardley mapping, then Welcome to the show.
Ben Mosior 0:16
Thanks for having me, George.
George Stocker 0:18
For folks who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Ben Mosior 0:25
Well, my name is Ben Mosier. I do a little bit of this and that I kind of jokingly call myself a methodology whisperer, which roughly translates to God, I wish I had a job title because I don't know how to describe myself. But you know, roughly that means I take these methods that people are using for thinking that are relatively unknown, but quite innovative. And then I try to turn them into everyday tools. So for the mapping is one of those endeavors. There are others but yeah, that's that's what I do. I run workshops and things like that and Build resources for people to learn.
George Stocker 1:02
Now for people who are new to wardley mapping, what is it?
Ben Mosior 1:07
Yeah, wardley mapping is a strategic thinking tool. I like to think of it as like a knowledge creation tool that enables action. It was invented by this lovely old man who lives in a swamp by the name of Simon wardley. He lives in UK. And he created this method after quite an extensive bit of research into what I would basically point out as being kind of fundamental patterns of capitalism, or the mapping the practice is basically three things. It's first and foremost a visual communication method. It's about kind of creating an artifact that we can challenge and have a conversation around. That's visual. And the second thing is, it's a body of research around these patterns of supply and demand competition, you know, how does capitalism big work, how do things evolve. And then the final thing is a strategic thinking process that kind of ties both those things together in order to enable you to make new decisions based on seeing a kind of strategic landscape that most will not be able to see. So it's a knowledge creation tool in order to enable you to take action.
George Stocker 2:24
Okay, and now with wardley mapping when when you start out with it, what are you mapping?
Ben Mosior 2:31
Yeah, so when you make a wardley map, what you're focusing on are things like, you know, what is the system that you're a part of, and you can have to make some curatorial decisions about how how some curatorial decisions about what scope to pay attention to, but you could say map of business, or you can map a market. You could even map yourself as an individual But roughly what you're doing is focusing on what is the system? What is its parts? How do they relate together? And then you do two things. You think about how the system produces value for somebody, some user. And then you also think about how those parts are changing under the pressures of supply and demand competition, which is capitalism. So what is the system? How is it changing? How does it produce value for users? And is basically creates a way for you to interact meaningfully with the world by modeling it. We can get into more of what that actually looks like. But it's not as complicated or weird as it sounds. It's literally just what are the parts? You know, what do they like? And how should we treat those parts? How should we have intent with respect to each of those parts?
George Stocker 3:51
Now, how do you spend your days with wardley mapping?
Ben Mosior 3:55
So I spend time with teams doing strategic kind of training. assizes, where what we'll do is we'll kind of go through the basics of wardley mapping, we'll apply doctrinal principles about, you know, what you ought to do as individuals in the organization, how to think about, basically, what's it What's a universal principle that you can apply to the work that you're doing? That that value that you all kind of share. And then also thinking about what Simon calls climatic patterns, which is basically like, what what is relatively predictable about capitalism that if we only took the time to notice, we could actually use that to anticipate change that's occurring in the wider market. And then like finally just thinking about how to go about strategic thinking, I get more energized by the thought of getting into kind of like, what what is the you're doing George, like with this podcast and what, what are the big questions you're trying to answer? And then you and I riffing off of that, given the context of what I do, and Given the context of mapping and how I think about those things, I feel like a lot of energy coming out of that kind of conversation, and kind of nodding toward the mapping without having to like get big make it the focus so much, if that knows,
George Stocker 5:14
no, I really like what you said. And that's, that's key is that, you? I, I believe that we, as software developers, and as an as a practice, software development itself is still in its infancy. You look at you look at construction, and they have building codes and building codes and building codes. They can tell you to a tee, how much a bridge will cost and how, what it can hold. You know, who's it for? What does it does, and with software development, we can barely tell you how long a little feature will take. And that's after 16 years of doing it. And then we're
Ben Mosior 5:55
still having fights about about like whether or not estimates are a valid thing to do.
George Stocker 6:00
Exactly what can you imagine? And you're to the point about building? Can you imagine if the building codes were like, yeah, you don't need blueprints. But we built software every day without blueprints without specifications. And we actively derived teams that do produce specifications that do produce tests in the form of test driven development. Now, what I focus on is I focus on I want every software team out there to know about test driven development. And I want to make it accessible for all software developers to a point that it becomes, I believe, it can become the standard way of developing software. Now I believe that we have we have taught it incorrectly. We have glossed over the hard parts. And we have, you know, over simplified it and not gone to, when you would use it, how you'd use it, why you'd ...