Simon Wardley Profile picture
Feb 7 11 tweets 4 min read
X : Have you ever mapped mapping itself?
Me : Yes, long ago ...
X : So, mapping is evolving?
Me : My form of mapping is. I'm constantly looking for better ways to represent the landscape. Some experiments succeed, most fail.
Me : It's a constant trade-off between consistency, communication and usefulness. It's quite easy in these early stages to formalise the system to a point that it isn't useful to many.
X : Isn't FinOps or best coding practice a choice?
Me : Sure, but that's not the point. We could take the map and represent like this ...
.. or like this ...
... or like this ...

There is a constant trade-off between consistency, communication and usefulness.
X : So, what's the ideal trade-off?
Me : I've no idea, that's why I'm constantly exploring to find other ways of representing the landscape,
X : How do you do that?
Me : By asking the question - "Is this more useful than that?"
X : I like the one without the axis.
Me : Hmmm, some do, most don't. The axes provides scaffolding and less "noise".
X : But things aren't as explicit.
Me : True but that's the whole point. It's a trade-off. Take the two extremes, one requires a deeper level of understanding, the other has many hidden concepts but is easier to explain relying more on additional story telling.
X : Which one do you prefer?
Me : Irrelevant as this is a community. I prefer to make the implicit more explicit where possible. Hence, this version. But it scares off most people (and with good reason because it's exposing a lot) and so I tend to stick with simple.
Me : A lot of value can be gained from simple maps, hence as much as the beast of standardisation raises its head within me and argues for repeatability / reproducibility ... I beat it down with the argument that the ideal is the enemy of inclusion.

Imperfection is your friend.

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More from @swardley

Feb 8
The digital transformation market is estimated by some analysts to be worth $3 trillion by 2025 . At the same time, 84% of these efforts are likely to fail based on historic rates.

That's just total nonsense, not the size of the market but the failure ...
... I know Kotter's HBR review of corporate transformation efforts in 2000 was “huge sums spent and huge rates of failure” but that was 20 years ago. Today transformation is easy ...
... Take a map of any system. It's an imperfect map, you'll have submaps for each of the component and maybe submaps below that. But the lines are interfaces and long ago we all learnt how to do test driven development ...
Read 24 tweets
Feb 7
X : What's the best way of writing a specification for a commodity?
Me : Your test suite.
X : Eh?
Me : Every novel thing starts with a few basic tests, as it evolves it gains more, your product should be built on those test and eventually they should help define the commodity.
X : What if we don't have tests?
Me : Does not compute.
X : Eh?
Me : Fzzz, whrr, fzzz, whrr ...
Me : Your business, hardware and software should have test driven development baked in throughout wherever possible. How do you change anything in a complicated environment without it. Every single line on a map is a relationship, an interface for which there should be tests ...
Read 8 tweets
Feb 6
We used to have 14M people living in poverty in the UK. Anyone know today's figure? 18M? More?-> former donors who are now turning to food banks themselves as the soaring cost of living expands the demographic of people struggling to afford food - theguardian.com/society/2022/f…
Still can't believe at the last election when faced with a choice between someone with integrity and truth who cared about people versus whopping lies with no integrity who cares about himself that the UK went for Boris. I know, I know ... blasted remainers confusing it all.
I do hope at the next election they are muzzled before they sink that one as well. It's bad enough we have to suffer this lot.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 6
Watched Dune. Fabulous cinematography, acting, directing ... everything. However, it never escapes the underlying and relentless plod of a story in which oppressed poor people need a rich dude to save them.

F&?ck Off!

Hopefully they surprise us in the next installment.
X : What would you like to see?
Me : Paul Atreides gets wiped out in the first battle being a chinless wonder. The prototype "love interest" Chani turns out to be Queen Boudica and wipes out all the oppressors, frees the planet and the Fremen whilst turning it into a green oasis.
It's like that old English tale of bandits using a moniker of "Robin Hood" to cause fear and confusion in a chattering ruling class being turned into a "rich dude saves poor oppressed people" ... as if.
Read 10 tweets
Feb 4
Hmmm, I've just tried wordle. God this is boring. I don't get it.

⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Ah ... sharing streaks and hard mode. Now I see the appeal. My streak is harder / longer than your streak. A wordy wanging competition.

Yep, I'm really bored now.
Hmmm ... acquired in a seven figure deal by NYT. Well done to the creator for capitalising quickly - theguardian.com/games/2022/jan…
Read 6 tweets
Feb 4
X : Will Boris go?
Me : There's always a chance. Do you think he should?
X : Lack of integrity.
Me : Isn't that what we voted for at the last election? I don't see the point of voting for something and then grumbling that you got what you voted for -
X : Did you vote for Boris?
Me : Hell freeze over first. No, I voted for Corbyn as I liked both his integrity and his policies.
X : What about Starmer?
Me : Better than Boris but I doubt he will win. We really needed someone like @lisanandy.
X : But Labour is doing well in the polls!
Me : Yep and that's good to see. But a long way to go and I'm fairly convinced that as we get closer to an election then the Labour Remain wing will come out cheering and hence sink Labour's chances. I don't think they can be muzzled.
Read 4 tweets

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