PRFAQ-for-launch.md

Wardley Mapping Foundation launched to promote strategic planning based on situational awareness, appropriate use of universal principles, and the evolution of value chains

London, UK. October 1st, 2022.

A community of practitioners of the Wardley Mapping strategy techniques created by researcher Simon Wardley announce that they have formed the Wardley Mapping Foundation (WMF) to create a global and open mechanism to coordinate development and educate the public on the mapping of competitive landscapes.

Business and government decision makers need to have situational awareness and understanding of how to apply universal principles, the climate they are operating in, and the evolution and diffusion of ideas and technologies.

Wardley Mapping is based on decades of research into business successes and failures and has been used to guide successful strategic decisions by startups, organizations of all sizes, and governments around the world. Maps describe position and movement, and Wardley Maps show how value chains evolve, with guidance on effective use of universal principles to make strategic decisions, compete in and disrupt markets.

Maps in general are simplified models of a landscape, created for a purpose. While learning to read a Wardley Map takes a matter of minutes, much more time and practice is needed to build the body of knowledge required to lead an interactive mapping exercise and create a series of maps and associated strategic moves.

The WMF is a non-profit created by a group of practitioners with support from Simon Wardley. To accomplish its mission to coordinate development and educate the public on the mapping of competitive landscapes, it will focus on six key areas: open respositories of knowledge, research, open training materials & education programmes, events, open standards & tooling, and community.

The goal is for Wardley Mapping to become a community driven endeavor, that is supported by, but no longer dependent upon, Simon Wardley himself.

The Wardley Mapping techniques have all been openly shared with the public using a creative commons license; the WMF will also publish content using creative commons licenses, upholding the community's values. It will create and own the "Wardley Mapping Foundation" brand, which will be used to endorse events, publications, standards & tools that the Foundation produces or supports, or are otherwise aligned with the mission of the Foundation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What alternatives did you consider? A: We looked at several ways to organize foundations, such as those run by the Perl, Apache, Eclipse and Linux Foundations, and looked into several legal structures including registered charities, non-profits, and for-profits. We decided to set up a non-profit governed by a Board of Trustees, managed using Organised Services Operating Model, which is based on Simon Wardley's universal principles. The WMF will provide a number of services, some of which will run Apache style projects located at github.com/wardley-mapping-foundation, with a core set of initial members being committers on the projects, new committers added on merit, and the foundation providing oversight.

Q: Who did we partner with to launch the foundation? A: We've not partnered with anyone yet, but it's early days! We are still exploring this space, if you have any suggestions get in touch.

Q: What does the brand logo look like? A: We're looking for a designer to help out, if you're interested get in touch.

Q: What in detail will the WMF do? A: Further detail on above from other discussions:

1. Create, maintain, share and support open repositories of knowledge that are free to use The WMF will continue Simon’s work to create, maintain, share and support open repositories of knowledge that are free to use. A great example of this is Simon's book, which is Creative Commons. As many of us know, Simon's book could do with an update, to incorporate a lot of discussions & thinking that have gone on and a Foundation could help in a number of ways (eg: any combination of sponsoring, organising, content proposals, editing, translating, etc). But a Foundation could help with other sources of knowledge too, like James Duncan's Organised Services Operating Model (osom.guide, also CC-by-SA); or repositories of maps, Wardleypedia.org, list.wardleymaps.com, and other things related to Wardley Maps

2. Encourage and facilitate research to advance public knowledge This includes Simon’s ongoing research on Universal Principles, also known as Doctrine, but also opens up the doors to support a broader audience of research. A good example is academic research like Roser Pujadas’ work on mapping as a form of sensemaking. Another is exploring the crossover between Dave Snowden’s work on complexity theory, or using tools like SenseMaker to measure Doctrine. Again, any research related to Wardley Maps.

3. Facilitate the creation of open training materials and public education programmes Simon’s book is great for a deep dive, but there are quicker ways to get started, and learning as a group where you can ask questions is often more effective. The Foundation would NOT seek to replace great services like Ben Mosior’s learnwardleymapping.com, or Krzysztof Daniel's learn.wardleymaps.com, or the growing number of people offering training throughout the world. But it could complement & support them by facilitating the creation of free reusable training materials, and publicly available certification standards like those created by non-profit GCATI.

4. Facilitate the hosting of events focused on educating the public and sharing knowledge Map Camp is an obvious example here, the intent is to support this & other groups running similar events around the world. We've tried to make Map Camp UK accessible to an international audience both through timing of sessions and being virtual, but it's hard to organise an event that works across all timezones. We want to see diversity - from local meetup groups, to larger events like Holger Gelhausen & Krzysztof Daniel's 2021 "Use Case" edition of Map Camp.

5. Encourage and facilitate the creation of open standards and tooling that improve the state of mapping Damon Skelhorn's onlinewardleymaps.com, Tristan Slominski's mapkeep.com, Adam Bouhenguel's MapScript, Rainmaker Software's Wemvu.la, to name a few. There are a growing number of great Wardley Mapping tools like these, all pushing forward the state of mapping. But they're not interoperable... Standard grammars, data formats, libraries, and such would help tools emerge & elvolve in this space. The WMF will help facilitate that.

6. Support the growth of an international community of people and organisations that share our values A Foundation would support the growth of an international community of people and organisations that share the WMF's values: Open, Inclusion, Gift, and Duty of care. This community already exists and is growing by the day. A membership programme for the WMF will help this community by bringing people together with a common purpose, and organising them more effectively.