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Please note that our syllabus has now moved and can be found on our website here:

https://www.teachingpublicservice.digital/en/syllabus-index

This page is no longer being maintained.

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<aside> 🛠 See other units in the syllabus

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Wardley Mapping

What is this page?

This is a detailed breakdown of how David Eaves, a Lecturer at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP), teaches the contents of Unit 2 of the open access syllabus developed by Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age. Read how part one of Unit 2 is taught here.

This page is part of a series of twenty-five classes that David developed originally for the Harvard Kennedy School's master and executive education programs, where he taught for eight years, and are now taught at UCL's master and applied learning programs.

We believe presenting diverse ways to teach the syllabus will help others adopt and teach the material in a range of contexts. See here how Konstanz University's Prof Ines Mergel teaches the same unit.

Who is this page for?

This page was developed for university faculty who teach public administrators or master's levels students in public policy and public administration. This material may also be suitable for teaching to upper year undergraduates.

Class Overview

When should an organization invest in new technologies? How does this choice change as technologies evolve? What processes or technologies should be outsourced? Questions like these are hard for managers to answer - particularly as they will frequently not be expert in the specific technologies themselves - leaving them dependent on experts' views. In this class, a new tool is introduced - Wardley Mapping - which breaks down a service into its component pieces to create a representation of the landscape in which an organization operates. Wardley Mapping has proven particularly helpful in bridging the gap between generalist decision makers and technical experts around questions involving digital technologies and practices. In addition to presenting the tool, other applications of the Wardley mapping are discussed, such as helping understand which digital skills an organization needs and why it is hard to innovate in government.

This Class' Learning Objectives

<aside> 📖 By the end of this class students should be able to:  Explain that digital systems are made of components which are connected together to solve problems.  Understand that components are of different qualities and maturities, and that governments and public servants have to make choices about which ones to deploy.

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How this class relates to the Digital Era Competencies

<aside> 💡 This class touches upon each of the eight competencies, but has a specific focus on four of them: Competency 5 - Change Competency 2 - Risks Competency 7 - Data Competency 3 - Multidisciplinary

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Assigned Reading and Practical Resources

As they work through the readings in advance, students should have in mind the following questions to help them prepare for class:

• Can you think of a technology that, during your lifetime, has moved from custom build to commodity? What was it? How has the way that technology is described and used changed over that time?
• Think of employees or colleagues you have worked with in the past. Can you identify one who was a pioneer? One that was a settler? One that was a planner? What traits did each one has that causes you to identify them as such? What made them effective on a project? What made them ineffective
• Can you think of a government project where a custom built technology was adopted where a commodity or product might have worked just as well? Why - in your mind - was the wrong decision made? How would you use a Wardley map to persuade a decision maker otherwise in the future?