Happy Monday!
I'm Cory Foy, and welcome to Mapping Mondays!
This week's video continues a several week series on
mapping strategic advantage by combining Wardley Mapping
and April Dunford's Product Positioning Framework from
the book Obviously Awesome to show how we can map out
unique attributes of our product.
Last week, I presented a value chain map for a company that
provides a bug tracking tool. The first step
in Dunford's framework is listing competitive alternatives
- what your customer would do if they didn't have
your product. We compared it to a shared online
spreadsheet, showing how we could think about competitive
alternatives by considering what happens when
components were in different stages.
What didn't change was the components between the two options.
That's partly because we approached it from a high level view
- for example, data store meant an actual database
for our application, but the spreadsheet itself for the alternative
But for this next step in the product positioning
we want to dive deeper and look at unique
attributes. These are capabilities or
features that our offering has that the competitive
alternatives do not. And one of the best ways to do that
is visualizing that on a graph! So let's look at
that value chain map again, but focus on the core
proposition of a bug tracking app - tracking bugs!
What we want to add to this graph
is what makes us unique. Of course, we don't know
what makes us unique until we're compared to our
alternative. So let's start with adding in how we
accomplish these things - what we think makes us unique.
For example, to collect
bug information, we have a standard bug entry form.
We also have an API that people can use to create bugs
in the system. Finally, we have integrations
with several market leading tools to create bug tracking
items in our system when those source systems detect errors.
For timing information, users can
manually update the fields in the system, or we can
automatically update them when certain actions happen, either
in our system, or through those integrations.
Bug status can likewise be manually updated.
Or, we have integrations with source control providers
that allow us to update the status based on the acceptance
of a pull request, or even a pull request only when
it has successful passing tests.
Taken together, this starts to paint a broader picture of how
we stack up against a simple spreadsheet.
But let's actually look at our unique attributes by doing this
exercise with our competitive alternative.
With a spreadsheet, we capture bug information by
filling out columns. Most online spreadsheets
also have an API you can use to write to cells
so...that's an option. Timing information
can also be updated manually, or in an automated
fashion using formula triggers. Finally,
Bug Status can of course be manually updated by changing a column
or via that API.
If we overlay these with our tools, we start
to get that picture of our unique attributes.
Clearly our application integrations win out here.
Whether it's creating bugs, updating timing information,
or being able to update bugs based on code changes.
But, does this seem right?
Certainly we have stronger unique attributes in the other areas, right?
And in fact, we do.
Dunford says that the unique attributes are often technical features
but can also be things like your delivery model,
business model, or specific expertise.
And I'd add one more - your evolution of components.
So let's go back and turn this
value chain graph of our system into a Wardley Map.
We can see that many attributes of it, even
the API, are products.
This means customers can
build components on top of our API, becase it's
providing an interface into the key steps in our system.
Now, let's look at that spreadsheet.
Here we can see that, while it does have an API,
you're going to manipulating cells, not
managing bugs. This means the API is really
more in the Genesis / Custom Built edge
in order to make it useful you're going to have to build your own abstractions
on top of it. Combining these
we can see that an additional unique attribute we have
is one of maturity. We have a more evolved view
of the market and needs for our customers' needs.
And they can build custom integrations more easily
when they need to do that. So when you're working
to determine your unique attributes, being able
to compare value chain graphs can produce some key
insights. But mapping those components can expose
additional unique attributes that go beyond your
features, to your approaches and advances.
Hope you've enjoyed this video! As a reminder I
offer free consulting sessions if you want to get started in mapping
and work with organizations across the globe helping them
understand and improve their processes and strategies.
If you'd like to set up a call, don't hestiate to reach out on Twitter
at @Cory_foy or via email at hello at Cory foy dot com.
Until next week, may you find and celebrate those
attributes that make you unique!