Abstract
Digital organizations face more and more complexity these days as a result of a mesh of products, services, technology, and of the people that work to build, operate and maintain them.
You may have a team that is able to solve a problem the right way flawlessly. But what helps them solve the right problem? How can we continuously validate our progress with people in “tech” and “non-tech” roles? And what should we do when new opportunities present themselves? Is the plan we had still valid?
Two approaches, if used together, can guide us to a successful outcome: Wardley Mapping and OKR.
- Wardley Mapping helps us capture the ecosystem that our organisation is a part of in a visual form. Because Wardley Maps forces us to start with the users’ needs, it is a perfect tool to discover where our organisations are failing to deliver the right value to customers.
- However, for success, we need more than direction; we need continuous execution towards our goal. Once we know where we are failing our users, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) are an effective framework for implementing a strategy to improve the situation.
Combining these two approaches results in a pragmatic strategy focused on outcome, not output. This helps everyone when the world around us changes, which it always does.
Join this remote workshop with Marijn Huizendveld and learn how Wardley Mapping and OKR, if used together, can be useful in keeping Direction and Execution constantly aligned.
Target Audience
Anyone who wants to challenge the status quo of decision-making under uncertainty in technology and business.
This workshop is for you if you’re a:
- C-level at a medium-sized firm
- Head of Product at a corporate
- Lead Engineer at a start-up
- Manager at a traditional company.
Topics
- OKR – Objectives and Key Results is a framework to set ambitious goals that allow teams to operate autonomously to achieve the Objective.
- Wardley Mapping is a way to capture the complexity of a business system in a graph that allows people to anticipate changes in the environment. It’s a perfect tool for devising business strategies for digital companies.
Program
In this course, you will learn to map your business and technological landscape so that a common language emerges to discuss strategic thinking and decision-making. It allows for scenario building, teaches about bias and assumptions, and comes packaged with a long list of ideas that may help in your situation.
Using visualisations, strategies can be challenged, and implementation options debated and weighed. As such, mapping is about the act and not merely the artefact. That is why this training is hands-on from the very start.
With a strategy in hand, you will learn about implementing your strategy effectively using OKRs. After discussing what makes for good and bad Objectives, you will dive into quantifying success.
You will learn about the risk of measuring based on proxy indicators. Successful implementations are all about continuous work: you will learn how a weekly cadence of a few priorities helps you stay on track. And with a Weekly Status email, you create all the transparency in the organization to get corrected when you or your team has a blind spot in their perception.
Agenda
Module 1
- Wardley Mapping Essentials
- Needs vs Wants
- Chain of Needs
- Everything Evolves
- Doctrine Principles.
Module 2
- Practical Application
- My First Wardley Map
- Maps Market.
Module 3
- Objectives & Key Results
- What makes a good Objective?
- Key Results that capture achieving the Objective
- Health Metrics to prevent burning bridges.
Module 4
- Mapping your OKRs
- Putting yourself on the map
- The power of the hypothesis
- Maps Market v2.
Learning Objectives – What are we gonna learn?
- Map the business and technology ecosystem using a Wardley Map
- List Doctrine Principles by Simon Wardley that help regardless of the environment you operate in
- Anticipate evolution in the landscape using the Wardley Map and Simon Wardley’s Climatic Patterns
- Explain the difference between good and bad Objectives
- Give examples of effective Key Results to use when using OKRs
- Draft a Status Email to notify interested parties about the progress on the Objective.
Expect to get your hands dirty
This class will emphasise practice over theory. Participants will work in groups and on their own, and there will be plenty of time and opportunities to discuss, ask questions and interact with each other and the trainer.
Mapping with imperfect knowledge today is better than mapping with perfect knowledge next year. The course will teach you the basics of mapping your ecosystem with a Wardley Map.
The map will be used to identify different objectives to advance the organisation’s interest. Within your group, you will weigh the options: what is the Objective we want to rally around? The chosen Objective will be captured in writing to inspire people. And within groups, you will pinpoint the best metrics to serve as Key Results.
The workshop will happen online and in live streaming: the trainer and all other participants will be in a video conference. You’ll be interacting and working together in real-time thanks to a variety of tools you’ll have at your disposal.
Online Workshop – How does it work
The workshop will keep its highly interactive and hands-on spirit despite being online.
This is why we require that all participants keep their webcam on for the whole workshop duration: this will enhance the quality of the communication and the workshop as a whole.
You won’t be sitting at your desk watching slides and videos, and you’ll be engaged in real-time activities for the majority of the time… as if we were in a real classroom!
Why should you buy a ticket?
After this course, you will be able to produce a Wardley Map for any topic you care about. The map will help you pick a strategy to achieve your goals. Thanks to the OKR framework, you will be able to implement your strategy without getting distracted.
Any tool has limitations; after attending this course, you will also be aware of when NOT to use Wardley Mapping or OKRs to achieve your goals.
