We fight about Agile versus Six Sigma, build versus buy, in-house versus outsourced. We pick our camps and defend them with the certainty of people who've never mapped the territory they're fighting over. But what if the real problem isn't which method is right — it's that we're choosing methods before we understand what we're building?

That's the story Simon Wardley brought to this conversation, centred on HS2 — Britain's high-speed rail project. CIO James Finley needed to build a virtual railway before the physical one, because it's cheaper to mess up a virtual landscape than the English countryside. The typical government approach would bundle everything into domain-based contracts and outsource. Instead, James spent a Sunday afternoon doing something different: he mapped the entire system. Not a component diagram. A proper map — with users at the top, a chain of needs underneath, and a critical question about each component: how evolved is it? Custom-built land referencing systems on the left. Commodity compute on the right. Suddenly, the methodology war dissolved. You need Agile where things are novel and changing. Six Sigma where things are commodity. Lean in the middle. They built the system using multiple methods simultaneously — ahead of schedule, under budget.

But Simon doesn't stop at the success story. The conversation digs into the harder questions: what happens when people have built 20-year careers on a single methodology and you're implicitly telling them they've been doing it wrong? How do you handle dominant voices who weaponise information asymmetry in collaborative mapping sessions? And why do maps create safer spaces for challenge than stories — even when the topic is as divisive as Brexit?

Key Discussion Points

• [00:01] The Virtual Railway: Why HS2 needed to model the entire railway digitally before breaking ground — and how James Finley approached it differently from typical government IT
• [00:06] The Sunday Afternoon Map: How plotting components on an evolution axis — from genesis to commodity — dissolved the methodology debate
• [00:10] Burning the Heretic: What happens when Simon tells Agile conferences that Agile isn't appropriate everywhere — and gets the same reaction at Six Sigma conferences
• [00:13] The Excuse Loop: Why "we didn't specify the requirements well enough" is the most dangerous sentence in software delivery
• [00:16] The Military Advantage: How situational awareness training gives people like James an instinct for context that methodology-trained professionals often lack
• [00:21] Practicing on Real Terrain: Andrea's experience joining a transport research group to deliberately practice mapping on systems, not just theory
• [00:26] Defeating Weaponised Silence: Using multiple mapping groups to dilute political power — you can hide the Eiffel Tower in your map, but it appears in six others
• [00:31] Maps Over Stories: Why challenging a map feels safe but challenging a story feels like challenging someone's leadership — and how Brexit supporters and opponents could argue productively through a map

Guest: Simon Wardley Hosts: Andrea Magnorsky, Kenny Schwegler, Andrew Harmel-Law

Hello and welcome to Virtual DVDs, stories on facilitating

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software design and architecture.

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Today.

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we're here with Simon who's

gonna tell us a story.

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as usual, I'm here with my

co-conspirators, Kenny and Andrew.

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So Simon, please take it away.

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Tell us a story about how you facilitated

software design and architecture.

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Simon Wardley: Oh gosh gosh Um first of

all thank you ever so much for inviting

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uh me to the show Hopefully the the video

and the sound is all okay Um what I'm

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gonna do is I am going to give a story

about that process of how do you decide

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what to build Um what to buy what what may

be to outsource because normally there's

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lots of arguments and lots of discussion

over this and lots of methodologies and

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techniques So I'm I'm I'm gonna give a

story about that and I'm going to do it

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in a heavy engineering subject So we're

gonna use high speed rail and I've got

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a bunch of slides So I'm gonna put those

up so you can record them and if you put

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them on YouTube you can use those there

but obviously I'm mindful that you know

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a lot of this will be audio podcasts so

I'll do a lot of description as we go

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along Okay So let me first share my screen

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entire screen There we are And it's a

picture of a train because we're talking

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about high speed rail which is heavy

engineering It's trains across the uk a

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picture of a good friend of mine James

Finley who's the well was the CIO for HS

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two Okay James had a problem And James's

problem was they needed to build the

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railway in a virtual world And the reason

why you build a railway in a virtual world

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before you build the physical railway is

because it's cheaper to mess up a virtual

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landscape than it is the English country

site So you wanna start off by modeling

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you know what this stuff is gonna look

like and So James had this project and the

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first thing They did is they they draft

out which is fairly typical the sort of

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components involved in the building such

a system So you have different types of

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users you you know you had the architects

who want to visually see almost like

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virtual headsets walk through to see where

where the trade is going where the tracks

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are going And of course that requires some

sort of geographical information system

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which of course the engineers will use

course it's not procedurally generated

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it's the eng you know it's the English

countryside So you've gotta have lad

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registry in there You need to know all

the different components like the tracks

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and all the supporting infrastructure

So there's a lot of different resources

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we need to know And you've got a Project

information management systems so when

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things are being built where they're

being built et cetera then you've got risk

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management systems So there's loads of

different components involved in building

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a virtual image of of basically the the

the railway And of course then there's the

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website so people can go and have a look

at it and see you see what what what's

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where the the tracks are actually going

Now the typical way we'd go about doing

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this is and with contract structures and

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click together various components which

like had a common domain Like some of

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them would be engineering some of them

would be back office some of them would

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be infrastructure and then typically

government would outsource it to different

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partners And they would go and build

it and build the interfaces and mostly

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suffer from massive cost overruns and

failures And and so this was fairly normal

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and James didn't want to do it that way

He thought there was something wrong

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with the way in which we went around

contracting So he spent Sunday afternoon

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and he's an old friend so I taught him

how to map many many years beforehand And

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so we spent Sunday afternoon mapping out

the actual space So You've gotta think

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of normally we would have some sort of

graph or architectural diagram of the

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components involved and some sort of

way of grouping them into sort of lock

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structures We call and James said well

let's not start with a graph Let's start

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with a map so he spent Sunday afternoon

building a map and I better for the people

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just listening explain what a map is So

you start by focusing on who the users

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are once you've got an idea of the users

you think about what their needs are And

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so for example the the engineers need

access to the geographical information

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system then you start thinking about well

what does a GIS actually need well in

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this case it needs project information

land referencing information a number of

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different components And so you build that

the graph of the components so you've got

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the users at the top and a chain of needs

underneath then to turn it into a map you

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simply go and ask a question About how

evolved the various components are and you

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you you map it across an axis a genesis

novel a new custom built examples products

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and then sort of commodity utility rental

services So if you think about that graph

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of components at the bottom you might have

things like data centers you might have

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power you might have compute or computes

very much a commodity And power is very

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very much a commodity But when you are

talking about like land referencing Land

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registry type systems they're they're much

more custom built And so what happened

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is he spent an afternoon he he mapped

this out and he sent me the map I took

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the map and challenged him a little bit

on the map and challenges important part

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of mapping So normally People tend to run

organizations with stories And the problem

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with stories is we tell everybody that

great leaders are great storytellers So

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when you challenge somebody's story you

are challenging their leadership ability

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And so people get defensive One of the

beauties about getting the story on a

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map is I don't challenge the person I

challenge the map I'm saying the map is

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wrong So it's much easier to have those

sorts of discussions So and we are I I

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was able to challenge his map a bit and

we modified it Now James problem was how

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do I manage this environment Well one of

the things you learn with maps is that

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all the components are evolving So this

is one of the patterns that you learn So

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everything which starts in Genesis Evolves

over time through custom and then products

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and converging So it's all moving from an

uncharted space to to very industrialized

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And it doesn't matter whether we're

talking about 3D visualization or land

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registry or you know compute they all

follow that pattern And one of the things

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I'd learned back in 2006 another pattern

was that there's no such thing as one

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size fits all methodologies It doesn't

matter whether I'm talking about project

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management or whether I'm talking about

financing a system So I'd learned that

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Agile extreme programming was very good

on the left hand side of the map in the

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uncharted space the Genesis Custom bill

it's good at reducing the cost of change

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And changes are norm So when you're

talking about something novel new it's

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gonna change a lot So you want methods

which are good at reducing the costs of

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change whereas as the components evolve

you need you know methods which are good

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at reducing deviation Because with a

commodity you want the same thing over

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and over and over again So things like

techniques like Six Sigma when outsourcing

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to the for in the middle you're all about

learning and reducing waste So things like

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you know lean scrum MVP all that sort of

stuff come to the for So I'd learned back

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in 2006 you used multiple methods So if

I apply that to a map what you discover

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is on the left hand side of the map you

should be building probably in-house with

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agile techniques More in the middle of

the map you should be using off the shelf

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products and and techniques like lead

And whereas on the right hand side of

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the map you should probably be thinking

about outsourcing to utility providers

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if they don't exist If you are building

this is where things like Six Sigma come

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into play what you learn is you have to

use appropriate methods And so that's

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another pattern that you learn You learn

that things like everything evolves you

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you learn you know there's no such thing

as one size fits all you learn you need

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to use appropriate methods And so this

was discussion that I had with you James

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and once he had the map of course he took

it back to his team They challenged it

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more made some more variations because

that's the point of a map it's a way of

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discussing that space ended up building it

and they built it ahead of schedule under

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budget which was pretty remarkable for

a big sort of engineering project within

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government and they use multiple methods

at the same time Now of course I often

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tell this story at various conferences

and if I go to you know a Agile conference

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and I say agile has a place to be used

but it's not appropriate everywhere Well

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people tend to go burn here but I can

go to Six Sigma Conference to tell the

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same story and say Six Sigma has that

place where it's appropriate but it's not

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useful everywhere And of course they get

burn merit as well It's you know Scaled

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Agile framework is one of these frameworks

which believes it's useful everywhere It

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has a context If I turn up there and say

you know it has a play burn inheriting

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there's we have a lot of you know sort

of let's one size fits all That's the

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way should we should do it I would always

argue this understand the context the

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environment then apply appropriate methods

to it And you can do this in you know if

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you take a map of the environment it's

a fairly pain painless process cause

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we can have a discussion about how bulk

the components are And once we've got

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that idea then we can start to select

Appropriate methods I suppose that's my

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story my my my story of conflict I hope I

hope that was interesting and maybe useful

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Kenny Schwegler: Yes, thanks.

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I, I think it's, uh.

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Interesting one.

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What we always say is start mapping it.

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So the conflicts will, uh, will be, will

be on the map, the model, or whatever

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you call it, and not between people.

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my first question is, what I often see

people ask is how do you go about when

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people actually don't start modeling?

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So you're in a situation, it's anarchy.

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Let's say it's anarchy,

and people just start.

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I'm from the Netherlands, so

usually it's just they're starting

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to discuss without mapping it.

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what's your approach to, hold

on, let's start visualizing this.

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Simon Wardley: Okay

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Kenny Schwegler: a lot

of people struggle with

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Simon Wardley: No Oh right I'm gonna I I

think I have a few more slides actually

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which oh no no no I I won't I'll just

use um uh I'll do this verbally Um

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One of the first of all I don't think

there's normally chaos there's often

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the issue is that there is order and

so there's order as in we're gonna

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use I dunno agile everywhere or we're

going to use slack This is our defined

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methodology and the one methodology

which we're going to use and so that's

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your first problem And normally in

these environments you have typically

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lots of history of lots of past failure

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And it's interesting because if you map

out the environment you try and work out

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you know why why is this stuff failing

Why are we having this this this problem

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And mostly because when we we break our

contracts into lots we have multiple

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different components of different types

So we might have a Genesis custom built

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product and commodity component all in the

same contract but we're not mapping the

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environment so we're not aware of this and

so when we outsource it We try to or we

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give it to somebody else with a contract

we try to define what the problem is and

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we can easily define commodities late

products so good on the the genesis custom

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cause we don't know what we want It's

going to change But by putting it into

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a contract structure we almost guarantee

we're gonna have cost over it And we will

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get into a fight with the vendor and the

vendor will say well look look at all the

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bits we delivered successfully all the

product commodity stuff And all the costs

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are associated with these components the

Genesis custom built And they will argue

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that the cost came from we didn't know

what we wanted Well we can't know what we

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want Okay We should have used a different

method the worst thing that happens is

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somebody on your side says next time we

need to specify better Because you can't

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specify it better That's the problem It's

the methodology So often in organizations

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our issue isn't so much chaos It's too

much order too much attempt to the one

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size fits all whether it's you know we

have very structured method or we're gonna

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use agile which is again this structured

method but more design for sort of genesis

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custom built We use Agile everywhere so

we is a lack of context So how do you

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persuade people looking at the environment

is important Well in case of James

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Case he'd been through enough government

projects and seen enough failure He was

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looking for something else to do Okay And

fortunately he has a military background

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he used to be in the Navy and one of the

thing the huge advantages of people in

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with military backgrounds is They are

taught about situational awareness It's

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really really important to understand your

landscape and to understand the context

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Anybody with military background knows

how important maps are and knows why it's

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important to understand the situation

So you know when you show somebody a map

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of a system it becomes fairly easy for

them to understand what it is why it's

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important why you should use different

methods Of course if you have somebody who

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doesn't have that sort of background well

now you've got another problem because

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you've got a technique of mapping But

you've first of all got to persuade them

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that looking at their environment matters

And these can often be people who've

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come through environments where they've

been taught the one size magic This is

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our chosen approach with no context no

anything and that's a difficult sell and

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it's difficult because if somebody's been

doing a job for 20 years with their one

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size fits all method it doesn't matter

how much disaster they've gone through

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always excuses and reasons like we didn't

specify it well enough you turn up and

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say actually it'd be useful Looking at

the context well that's always like saying

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you've been doing it wrong for the last

20 years which they have But you know if

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they're senior they're not gonna want to

hear that yeah I'm afraid it's a tough

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tough one It really is a tough one it

helps if you've got people with a military

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background but you have to start by first

explaining to people Why looking at the

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environment might be important And of

course that's really tough if they've

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been in that role for a long time it it's

like oh my gosh you know what are you

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been doing it wrong

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Andrea Magnorsky: I have a

related question there, Simon.

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And that is to do with, for

example, I think everyone in this

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meeting is, quite acquainted with

teaching, modeling techniques.

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I think.

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All of us are, kind of

quite practiced on that.

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and one of the things that I find it

helps sometimes is show don't tell.

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It's like, we're gonna do this thing

or don't even tell what we're doing.

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It's like, okay.

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So, and you start mapping as a way to map.

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You're like, I, you know, I can

understand that I'm slightly

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really visual, and you do it.

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The thing is that we have

the advantage of having.

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Experience and you can't get

good at mapping without mapping.

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And I think that's the practice bit is

where, where I have the, is my question

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for you, which is how do we help people

get better at practicing a skill that

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sometimes they are like, I can maybe see

how this might be useful, but I don't

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wanna invest multipliers to find out.

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So how, I mean, it's hard for you because

you have done a lot of mapping, but at

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some point you didn't do a lot of mapping,

so maybe what would you suggest there?

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I.

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Simon Wardley: Yes So okay Well my

story was I was running a company and

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I realized over time that we had loads

of things called maps in the company

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But none of them were maps they're all

graphs And I realized that imp import

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running understanding your landscape was

important Now it was easy for me because

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I was running the company and as soon as

I realized we had no maps and I understood

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how important understanding the landscape

was then I spent about a year developing

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a way of mapping outer space And that's

what became wardly mapping And of course

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I've been doing this for 20 odd years and

I I use it everywhere from organizational

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structures to strategy to all sorts of

different spaces So it's easy for me

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but again it's a problem of explaining

to others and explain to others is a

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bit like playing guitar you can't read

a book on playing a guitar and pick up

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and be Jimi Hendrix You actually have to

get your hands on the instrument So you

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have to practice at some point So Andrea

you came along We we did I I often do

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these little research groups where we'll

go and map different areas Like we map

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healthcare or we map construction or

we map you know recently we did space

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Andrea Magnorsky: Transport.

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Simon Wardley: and you

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Andrea Magnorsky: Yeah.

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Simon Wardley: in the

transport One Transport

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Andrea Magnorsky: Oh yeah, absolutely.

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I knew about wordly mapping, and,

I just, kind of wanted to see how

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other people do it for not systems.

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So my main quest was like, it was a

deliberate practice exercise for me.

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Simon Wardley: Okay So the transport one

was really interesting because it was

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during that cause we had some transport

planners from all around the world

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Andrea Magnorsky: Australia's well.

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Simon Wardley: and um it was interesting

Australia of course Uh and it was

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interesting because we had There was a

realization in that through the mapping

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that the internet itself was actually

a transport system which impact other

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transport systems I don't know how

familiar the people were but certainly

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for the some of the transport planners

This was quite a big revelation cause

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when they're thinking about congestion

they're they're thinking about in terms

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of roads and brail but actually you've

gotta think of the internet as a transport

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system as well So it was lovely to see

that sort of uh discussion and several of

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the people at the group Were unfamiliar

uh with the technique And so it was a

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yeah that was a process of them seeing

it being applied being involved in the

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discussion being able to challenge the

components for a topic or domain that

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was important to them And so that's why

I like doing those things and why I get

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to see groups now using it in healthcare

and other spaces But if you are you

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know you could certainly you know if you

are within an organization and you are

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dealing with a problem suggest to people

Hey why don't we give this a go and sit

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down Just have a map cause maps are in

perfect representation Let's spend a

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couple of hours see what comes out of it

The the only word of caution I would give

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is that maps tend to get people fired

in organizations Sorry So you know that

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happens quite a lot cause what happens

in the process of mapping it out things

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come out about what we're often doing and

if you are not careful that can tread on

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political toes I'm always So I normally

go into organizations try to speak at

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a high level about why situational ma

awareness matters Encourage them to to

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get groups of people just to have look

at a problem and to practice it you

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can do that lower down the organization

and just be careful only because

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politics comes into play unfortunately

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Kenny Schwegler: It reminds me,

uh, a bit of, uh, sorry, Andrew.

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1, 1, 1 learning before, uh, you

ask, it reminds me a bit of the

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anxiety of learning by Atkar H Shine.

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Simon Wardley: Mm-hmm

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Kenny Schwegler: that there's

two anxieties for people.

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One, anxiety is, I think survival

anxiety, and that's, that's the

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Simon Wardley: Mm-hmm

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Kenny Schwegler: You get fired.

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Anxiety.

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he talks about a different

anxiety, survival, anxiety,

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learning, anxiety in survival.

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So the survival one is do shall learn

else, get fired, that's not durable.

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The learning anxiety is

supposed to be durable.

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So, This is something you

cannot change individually.

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It's an organizational thing, right?

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But how can I make learning anxiety as low

as possible, lower than the survival one,

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and then people might be interested in,

it's an interesting article I that remind

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this conversation reminded me of that.

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Simon Wardley: The only thing I would say

is that in organizations which have they

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often have their set procedures the set

ways of doing things and and even though

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they are continuously having failures

and cost overruns and they continue to

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reapply the same processes often with the

same set of excuses and my you know the

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typical one I see is we Didn't specify

the problem well enough the reality

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is you can't specify the problem well

enough you have to use multiple methods

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One which is adaptable to constantly

changing environment we don't poorly

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understand and one ones which are can be

highly structured and defined We don't

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do that because we don't understand the

context So we want our structured and

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highly defined whichever one we choose

And so it's gonna impact us And so we

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can either you know we do it in the two

extremes like like six Sigma stroke you

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know outsource too much or we go the

other way and we do agile everything

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which again is not a good idea so the

problem Almost all these problems stem

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from a lack of awareness of the context

of the problem that we're doing and we

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just don't have the tools And the thing

is when you tell people how to do it does

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undermine what they've been doing for the

last 20 to 30 years So just be my fault

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Andrew Harmel-Law: That's what I

was gonna ask about Simon actually.

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'cause how often do you see people, some

of the things I see a lot are people

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weaponizing because to get a really

good map with a lot of context, you

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need hopefully people come together and

share their individual context and you

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build them together to make this map.

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How often do you see people

weaponizing not sharing the that is,

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you know, you've mapped everything

else you think this can't be.

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It doesn't feel like this, this, this

node on the graph is in the right place.

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It feels like maybe if we were

getting more information, we

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would, it would be different.

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Or maybe this is a bigger

problem or something.

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How often do you,

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Simon Wardley: So

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Andrew Harmel-Law: that?

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Simon Wardley: So there's a technique that

I use in the research groups when I I'm

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I'm about to do one on quantum computing

I I've done one on AI and things like this

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So the the one of the techniques I use

is when you map a space so imagine that

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no one's mapped Paris you send a group

out to map Paris and they come back with

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a map and you ask them what's important

might tell you Pierre's Pizza parlor cause

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they've mapped Paris from a perspective

of where to eat nice pieces so what you

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need to do is send groups out to map from

multiple different perspectives and then

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you can aggregate So what I I did this

with the a an ai the AI research project

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about 60 70 people we mapped out ai we

broke into seven different groups And

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so we produced seven different maps from

seven different perspectives And we cho

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chose those thought themes beforehand and

then we can aggregate across all those

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maps to find what really matters So the

interesting thing about people using it

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politically and trying to to to push the

conversation in in a particular direction

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is you've diluted their voices because

I break them into seven different groups

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so they're within one group So yes they

can highly influence the map of Paris

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over here but there's six other maps of

Paris and what we're looking for is the

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commonalities the aggregated effects

from the Eiffel Tower you might have

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hidden the EEN tower in your map cause

you want to keep it secret Well tough

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It's appeared in the other six maps so

it sticks out like a saw thumb So that's

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a general technique that I use now is to

take a large enough group and I reduce

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the time So if we map an entire industry

we'll do it within 12 hours we're about

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to do quantum We do it over three weeks

12 hours up six sessions of two hours

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That's all it takes And we'll take the

people and we'll break them into I'll

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break them into multiple groups and that's

partially to avoid the super powerful

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voices Restricting information within that

because it filters from all the other maps

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Andrew Harmel-Law: group, so

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Simon Wardley: Yes

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Andrew Harmel-Law: everyone's

part of the, the integration.

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Simon Wardley: Yeah so basically once

you once once you produce the all of the

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different maps so they have in groups

you bring it all back together and we

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aggregate across all of them And this is

where all the things bubble out So yes

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you can certainly influence and hide the

stuff that matters Haha I'm going to be

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evil Information is power in your map Yeah

But there's you know five or six other

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maps and you weren't hiding it in those

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yeah, because I

see like my job is, is trying to.

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People hiding information

is the big tripping up point

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Simon Wardley: Um but um that's the um

you will often get dominant dominant

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personalities in the group And and the you

know if you want to get to the the answer

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of what is there you still need them to

be involved in the group But what you are

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doing is by using several groups is you

can pick up the signals from all of them

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And so it diminishes that voice map power

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Kenny Schwegler: Actually that's

what the, advice process, Andrew,

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that you wrote about, right.

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with the ADRs as a transparent beacon.

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I see.

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That works because you ask

people to write it down.

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I actually had someone write an A DR

and tack that person deliberately,

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like you can write here, right?

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But there will also be six,

seven other people writing

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Andrew Harmel-Law: Yeah.

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Simon Wardley: Mm-hmm

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Andrew Harmel-Law: I'm currently

experiencing, weaponizing

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non non contribution, which I

never thought I would see, but,

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Simon Wardley: Mm mm No

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Andrew Harmel-Law: they're

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Simon Wardley: it it

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Andrew Harmel-Law: you've

added me, but I'm, yeah,

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Simon Wardley: yeah

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Kenny Schwegler: yeah.

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Simon Wardley: Yeah that does happen

But again you want to do is you want to

375

encourage safe challenge so you want to

get outta story world because because

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Andrew Harmel-Law: disagree,

like you said, Simon, right?

377

Like in the, in the, yeah.

378

You, you don't want

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Simon Wardley: But you want it on the maps

not personal So my my favorite example

380

of this you mentioned it goes Shine is I

I needed to produce a map of culture I I

381

realized some time ago that culture wasn't

one thing It was many many different

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components And Kroger who anthropologist

famously said anthropologists have been

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arguing for a hundred years and still

can't agree what culture is So and all

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these books on culture So this is what

it is And there's all these the experts

385

saying we can't even agree And that's been

going on for 150 years And then Margaret

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Mead she had said that language was part

of culture and that creates a problem if

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it's part of culture you won't be able

to explain it completely within language

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alone So I had this idea of mapping our

culture and order to do so I actually

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took two warring groups Who couldn't agree

on anything and these were in the uk and

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these were Brexiters and remainers and

these people couldn't agree in story form

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at all but we could challenge and agree

through the form of a map But not in story

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So they would all argue about the position

of things on the map and everything else

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and we got really good discussion going on

And as a result we used Brexit as the sort

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of framing of this they they created quite

spectacular map of culture itself and all

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the components that were involved we'd

have got nowhere in in story for we just

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have got shouting arguments all the time

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Andrea Magnorsky: I think we have hit like

a, a longer time than usual and we have

398

gone through quite a, a bunch of things.

399

There's always time for a, another story.

400

I think.

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Andrew, it seems like you

probably have a story for us soon.

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Um.

403

But on that note, Simon, thank you

so much for joining us today and

404

for sharing your story on creating

and basically designing software.

405

Thank you very much.

406

All the best.

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Bye-bye.

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Simon Wardley: Thank you Uh it's

absolute pleasure and thank you Bye