Happy Monday! I'm Cory Foy, and this week's
video starts a couple week series on using maps
to evaluate strategic advantage.
Recently I've been reading the book Obviously Awesome
by April Dunford who lists out five
plus one components of effective product positioning.
Competitive Alternatives, Unique Attributes,
Value and proof, Target market characteristics
market category and relevant trends.
While some of these are focused on more traditional
market research, there's a lot we can use Wardley
Maps for to help us dig in. Let's start with
Competitive Alternatives. Dunford defines
this as what our target customers would use
or do if our product didn't exist.
What's great about that is this definition lends itself
very well to Value Chain Maps.
Let's imagine we're a software company that provides a bug tracking tool.
So, we start with a user need of tracking work
for a software team. Looking at the components
we need to do that, we have users, bug information
timing information and bug status.
These rely on a data store, which is also a dependency
of reporting. We also have the notion of
remote access, and an implied security model.
We may also have assignment of bugs to users.
If we map these components
several end up in the product or utility end stage.
What Dunford asks us to do is
think about how else customers would solve this problem
without our product. And one interesting way
to do that is to think about the solutions if these
components were in Genesis or Custom Built.
In that context we still have users, bug information
timing information and bug status. We still rely
on a data store with reporting and assignment.
But instead of our tool, customers use a shared
spreadsheet. Especially with something like integrated
Google Apps, you get users and security from the
company's domain users. Bug information, which
is a column, timing information
also a column, though maybe with a formula auto-updating
bug status - another column with fixed
choices, remote access - it is a Google doc -
and even assignment, yet another column. The
primary weakness would be in reporting.
Comparing the maps, we can put some cost and timing
estimates on here. For example, setting up users
is free for the Google Docs case, but will require work
in our application, unless we integrate as a
Single-Sign On provider. Typically bug tracking tools
require setting up projects, bug definitions and user
access, all which take time. Worse,
the cost of change for a bug definition might be higher
in our application if we have to deal with ensuring
historical data doesn't change. So we have some challenges.
As Dunford says in her book:
"but if the real alternative in the mind of a customer is Excel,
you can't say your product is easier to use unless
it is easier to use than a spreadsheet." By mapping
out the user needs and thinking about deevolution
we were able to map some alternatives we don't
traditionally think about. Which means, we'll have to think
carefully about what differentiates us, as well as
our positioning. We'll spend some more time on that
next week when we talk about unique attributes.
Hope you found this week's video useful! If you're trying
to figure out the best way to get started with mapping, or
applying strategic thinking with maps, don't hestiate to reach out on
Twitter at @Cory_foy or via email
at hello at Cory Foy dot com. And I've included a link
to Dunford's book in the blog post for this video.
Until next week, Happy Mapping!