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A deck from Why I love Wardley maps
Reading one map
One map, read as a story: the afternoon of 10 October 2026, one release at a time, with one question per frame. Ten slides.
1 / 10
Reading one map
A map is a way to tell a story. This deck reads one out, frame by frame: an afternoon on sgit.ai in which a reading meter, pay by depth, personas and an encrypted share shipped, drawn one release at a time.
Each slide asks one question of the frame. How do I think about this, what am I seeing, where do I focus.
2 / 10
Before: where is the user, and what exists?
Where is the user? At the top: the reader, on every device.
What exists? Everything on the right: the articles and the build, git, browser storage, vaults, the sealed envelope, Stripe. Nothing on the left.
What am I seeing? A business whose user only touches mature things. Comfortable, and not a strategy.
3 / 10
A meter: is anything above the new dot?
The first new dot appears at genesis, close to the user, standing on browser storage.
The question: is anything above it? Yes, the user, directly.
Where to focus: this is the right altitude. A new thing the user touches is worth more than a better thing three layers down.
4 / 10
Live: what was built, and what was bought?
Pay by depth, below zero with no block, a Stripe link. Three new dots.
Look at the edges. Every one runs to the right. Nothing new was built below the line.
What am I seeing? The build-or-buy reading, clean: custom at the top, commodity underneath.
5 / 10
Personas: where did we hook in?
The dot that matters is not the persona. It is the edge: the persona connects to the articles, the oldest and largest thing the site has.
Where to hook was answered by the most mature component on the map.
Where to focus: a new feature that stands on the thing you already have most of is cheap and hard to copy.
6 / 10
Versions: why was this one free?
A small dot, and it stands on git.
It cost almost nothing because its shoulder was a commodity that the site already stood on.
What am I seeing? The frame I use to explain why some features are free and some are not: look at what is under them.
7 / 10
The encrypted share: is the chain ours?
The first dot that stands on a vault.
What am I seeing? The custom thing we had to build sits on the one product we made ourselves, so the chain under it is ours end to end.
Where to focus: this is where the map starts to pay for itself. Everything above the vault is now a reason for the vault.
8 / 10
The reader card: did the user notice?
Usefulness sets the price. Nothing new under it; it is a change at the top of the chain, where the user is.
The flow reading: everything below now has a reason to exist that the user can see.
What moved the needle? This one. It is the smallest dot on the map and the only one the reader would name.
9 / 10
Next: which dot moves first?
Dashed dots: real payments, a persona in your own vault, other sites.
The story's last line is always the same question: which of these moves first, and what does it stand on?
Where did we walk back? Not on this map; the two walk-backs of the following days are on the leverage map in the article.
10 / 10
Seven questions, one picture
- Where is the user?
- What is new?
- What does it stand on?
- Where did the movement happen?
- Where did we walk back?
- Where would somebody else hook in?
- What is next?
A reader who did not know the business now knows what it is. That is what a map is for.
The explanation deck, and the article both come from, are linked below.
The other deck: Why I love Wardley maps. The article both come from: Why I love Wardley maps. Every map is a claim by its author, not a measurement.