TBM 387: Lenses

If you’re around tomorrow (Thursday, November 13th) at 8 AM Pacific, join me for a chat on Shape Up and designing effective constraints. Give this post a read/skim prior to the chat if you can.

I see a lot of diagrams in Miro. And one thing that fascinates me is how fluid and expressive people can be when they are untethered from the task of creating a “simple slide.” It highlights one of the most enduring realities about product work: one lens is never enough, and you can only process so much at a time. (Aside, want to see a neat Miro board?)

Some people are comfortable wading into the mess; other people, less so. Some people are fine dancing between the various lenses; for other people, they have a violent, knee-jerk reaction to anything “complicated”.

List the Lenses

Here’s an anonymized (and gasp, simplified) example from a recent internal workshop.

Your assignment/though experiment: catalog all the different lenses and dimensions in play here. I’ll list them out further down the post, so don’t scroll down for now.

The Lenses

I’ve labeled some of the important lenses on the diagram:

A. Customer Journey Lens

In this case, a simple sequential flow is used to highlight the major stages in a customer’s progression toward a specific goal or outcome.

B. Persona Lens

Personas mapped to journey steps. This can express how different customer segments experience the journey in unique ways. For example, “onboarding” to a health insurance plan for a family of four might look very different from onboarding for an individual just out of college.

C. Wardley Y-Axis Lens

Wardley Maps use the Y-axis to convey proximity to the user. Nodes with higher Y values are closer to the user or consumer of the value chain. Enabling capabilities generally influence the components above them rather than the components below them.

D. Wardley X-Axis Lens

In Wardley Mapping, the X-axis maps capabilities, practices, data, or knowledge in terms of their evolution. The x-axis is adaptable. You can use if for:

• Activities: Genesis, Custom, Product, Commodity

• Practices: Novel, Emerging, Good, Best

• Data: Unmodeled, Divergent, Convergent, Modeled

• Knowledge: Concept, Hypothesis, Theory, Accepted

E. Wardley Movement

Wardley Maps are not static. This lens shows movement over time. For example, in this diagram, we illustrate the expected evolution of a capability from product to commodity.

F. Team Boundary Lens

The purple outlines show which capabilities sit “inside” which team boundaries. The line might convey ownership or describe subject matter expertise, the flow of information regarding capabilities, or all of the above.

G. Team Interaction Lens

Arrows and cross-team connectors show how teams interact. These can mirror capability dependencies, but they can also indicate interaction modes from Team Topologies, such as collaboration, “X as a Service,” or facilitation.

H. Opportunity and Option Lens

At any given time, there may be an opportunity to improve a capability. Opportunities can be broken down into options for addressing them. These options are not commitments. They may resemble work, but at this stage, they are proposals.

I. Execution and Kanban Lens

To Do → Doing → Done, with notes representing actual work. This illustrates work items progressing through a linear workflow, such as an experimental flow or delivery pipeline.

Connectivity is key. We’re seeing how these different dimensions connect! For example:

• A → C (Customer Journey → Wardley Y Axis). How each step in the journey depends on capabilities at different layers of proximity to the customer.

• E → F (Wardley Movement → Team Boundaries). How the evolution of capabilities may push teams to reorganize or merge.

• A → F (Customer Journey → Team Boundaries). How customer-facing flow exposes which teams interact most directly with user outcomes.

• F → G (Team Boundaries → Team Interaction). How team boundaries influence cross-team dependencies and communication patterns.

• A → H (Journey → Opportunities). How drop-offs or friction in journey steps highlight new opportunity spaces.

Even in a “simplified” version of the map, there are at least 20 directional relationships between dimensions. Can you find them all? Each lens informs another, often in multiple directions.

And just think, we’re only scratching the surface. What’s missing?

• How funding and capital moves through the system

• Decision rights, policy, etc.

• Risk

• The flow of feedback, data, and information

• Cultural norms between the different groups

• The “health” of the various capabilities (beyond their evolutionary phase)

• Metrics and measurement

• Market forces

• Flywheels and differentiation

• Power, the official and unofficial “org chart”

• The context the visualization was even created!

The Question

Given than these lenses are all valid, who picks and chooses which lenses matter in your organization, and when they matter? Who picks what goes on each slide?

And remember, your goal in ops is to help people do their job—not admire the mess.