Thread by @TCKlaussen

(THREAD) I first read about Wardley mapping November 3rd, 2017.

My experience so far: Mapping is not an easy trait to master, I doubt I will ever master it, but it has brought me value from day one.

1/ The fact that @swardley made mapping open source makes me truly grateful. But I’ll admit, him open sourcing it puzzled me at first.

I could not understand how he could give away something that had taken him years and years to put together.

2/ Turns out Simon has shared a map explaining why. Here he shows how any company adopting mapping(situational awareness) could benefit and thus him also.

It took me a long time to understand that he had actually spelled it out in plain sight, mastery takes time indeed.

3/ On that note: A brave champion of Wardley Mapping is @BenMosior.

Ben has started a Patreon to make Wardley Mapping more accessible and bring more people value by using it. patreon.com/learnwardleyma…

4/ Ben is summarizing the chapters of Simon's free book in short videos to get the basic message of Mapping out to a broader crowd, people that has heard about mapping but haven’t found the time to read the book.

medium.com/wardleymaps/on…

5/ I love the idea, I joined the patronage (it’s ok to join if you have already read the book) and I have learned a lot since joining.

For all people interested in finding their way but unable to read the book I strongly encourage you to join as it may help a lot.

6/ After joining I suggested the community could map something together, in the spirit of thinking big I suggested China vs US trade war a topic. I at least had no clue about it and knowing nothing I started with reading.

7/ I found an article written by Fredrik Grønkvist, living in Hong Kong. It sounded like Fredrik had a lot more knowledge about the trade topic than myself, so I decided to make a map of the article to get a feel of the subject. chinaimportal.com/blog/us-china-…

8/ Also @tristanls has made some sweet templates for mapping that I wanted to try out, so this was killing two birds with one stone.

9/ After making the map and sharing it with the internal Slack forum for Learning Wardley Mapping, @BenMosior asked me if I would share how I went about making the map publicly.

10/ Here we go (disclaimer this is solely based on the article and the elements in the map origins from there): I started out with mapping the current value chain described in the article

11/ Customers in US needs items produced in China, some of those items are sold directly from US businesses others distributed using Amazon or other type of marketplaces.
Import businesses in US compete with companies based abroad providing goods in the same online marketplace.

12/ A highly competitive environment. So what is the effect of Tariffs:
Adding tariffs of 25% on gods is a cost US import firms needs to consider transferring to their customers.

13/ Abroad companies can import goods duty-free as long as the value is less than 800$, there is also a ePackets benefit for importing.

Keep in mind that goods affected now are those in the left column starting with Chemicals. The Watches column is not affected yet.

14/ What can US import businesses do? Movement inserted on map:

15/ They could move their business to Hong Kong or other abroad locations and get the same benefits as others importing below the duty-free limit.

Not easy as most people have inertia to move abroad because of things such as family and mortgage.

16/ Are there other alternatives?

Movement on map: If there are similar products in other countries such as India/Vietnam importing from them is a viable option.

If there are no production facilities, there is a huge barrier.

17/ Building new factories would require a lot of resources and time.

Also, in the current political landscape the risk of a reversal of the tariffs that justified the new production line is highly possible.

18/ So there are possible moves but also substantial inertia for using them.

What does the Author conclude with?
If you are an US importer competing with the Duty-free segment on Tariffed goods, consider shutting down or moving abroad to copy the competition.

19/ My understanding after making the map:

Companies in other countries with existing competing production lines to those in China will benefit. If Tariffs expand to other products this will of course increase.

Companies building alternative production lines is unlikely yet.

20/ The main point of this example is not a deep analysis of the trade war but more to show one(imperfect) way to do mapping using a kick ass template and an article both publicly available.

I hope it can be useful as an example of mapping, love to hear any feedback.