Wardley Mapping Canvas Template
Build an intuitive understanding of your business context.
About the Wardley Map template
What is a Wardley Map?
A Wardley Map was developed to map the structure of a business, understand its context, and better serve users. You place components with value on the y-axis and commodity on the x-axis.
Every organization operates within a landscape that contextualizes and influences your decisions. To build a Wardley Map, you must illustrate that landscape as a value chain. What’s a value chain? It’s a series of activities or elements that are required to meet a user’s needs. You categorize each element of the value chain according to their stage of evolution compared to the competition. The resulting Wardley Map describes your assumptions and intentions for anyone to read.
The goal of Wardley mapping is to build a shareable, scalable visualization of the landscape surrounding your business. It allows you to articulate your strategy while summarizing the landscape in a way that’s easy to understand. A Wardley Map is like a time capsule, capturing your understanding at a certain point in time and documenting it for the future.
Why use a Wardley Map?
Use a Wardley map to assess future scenarios, quickly validate solutions, and develop a shared visual understanding of a business' context. Using a Wardley Map, you can significantly reduce a project's risk and avoid costly mistakes.
The benefits of using a Wardley Map
Benefit 1 - Enhance communication. Easily communicate your understanding of the landscape to your team, new hires, and stakeholders. Wardley Maps are powerful tools that can help get new employees up to speed quickly, so they can hit the ground running on day one.
Benefit 2 - Identify risks and opportunities. A Wardley Map clearly lays out the environment in which your product is operating, as well as the value chain that constrains it. This allows you to understand the challenges ahead and how can exploit market gaps.
Benefit 3 - Reduce costs. Wardley Maps help ensure everyone on your team is aligned, and that cross-functional partners share your understanding of the landscape. This alignment reduces costly errors and streamlines your processes.
Benefit 4 - Foster collaboration. Wardley mapping empowers you to minimize risk and conflict across your teams. Teams that engage in Wardley mapping report higher satisfaction, deeper understanding, and closer alignment on shared goals.
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Stakeholder Mapping Template
Works best for:
Business Management, Mapping, Workflows
A stakeholder map is a type of analysis that allows you to group people by their power and interest. Use this template to organize all of the people who have an interest in your product, project, or idea in a single visual space. This allows you to easily see who can influence your project, and how each person is related to the other. Widely used in project management, stakeholder mapping is typically performed at the beginning of a project. Doing stakeholder mapping early on will help prevent miscommunication, ensure all groups are aligned on the objectives and set expectations about outcomes and results.
Competitive Analysis Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Decision Making
Developing a great product starts with knowing the lay of the land (meaning who you’re up against) and answering a few questions: Who are your competitors? How does your product or service compare? What makes you stand out? A competitive analysis will help find the answers, which can ultimately shape your product, value prop, marketing, and sales strategies. It’s a great exercise when a big business event is about to occur — like a new product release or strategic planning session.
Product Positioning Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Product Management, Desk Research
For better or for worse, your company’s chances for success hinge partially on your market. As such, before you start building products and planning strategies, it’s a good idea to conduct a product positioning exercise. A product positioning exercise is designed to situate your company and your offering within a market. The product positioning template guides you to consider key topics such as defining your product and market category, identifying your target segment and competitors, and understanding your key benefits and differentiation.
Work Plan Template
Works best for:
Mapping, Project Planning
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Venn Diagram for Research
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Venn Diagram
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Venn Diagram for Learning and Education
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Enhance learning and teaching with the Venn Diagram for Learning and Education template. Use it to compare concepts, illustrate relationships, and facilitate discussions. This template helps students and educators organize information visually, making complex ideas easier to understand and retain. It's an excellent tool for classrooms, study groups, and professional training sessions, promoting deeper understanding and active learning.