For change managers & strategy consultants
Wardley maps that come out as actual maps
Run a Wardley session with your team. Harmonica gathers individual perspectives and suggests a map for you to review. Correct its placements, then take the result into your next strategy discussion.
A conversation.
A map you can question.
A fictional software team is reviewing customer onboarding. Where should they build something distinctive, and where could they use an established service?
Follow the reasoning
These sample contributions explain three placements. The remaining components complete the illustrative value chain.
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Customer success lead · synthetic
“Customers get value when their first workflow runs. Our team still guides them through setup.”
Guided setup sits close to the customer’s need. In this scenario it still depends on people adapting the process, so the first draft places it in Custom-built.
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Product lead · synthetic
“Workflow rules differ between customers. We are still learning which parts should be standard.”
Workflow configuration stays in Custom-built. The team has a repeatable capability, but the shape of the solution is still changing between customers.
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Platform engineer · synthetic
“Our sign-in flow has a custom integration.”
The illustrative first draft treats “custom integration” as evidence that sign-in itself is custom-built. The facilitator’s clarification below changes that placement.
The useful part is
the correction.
Sign-in: Custom-built → Commodity
The facilitator asks: “Is sign-in itself custom, or is it your integration with a standard service?”
“We maintain the integration. Sign-in itself is a standard hosted service.”
Illustrative clarification from the platform engineer
The reviewed map moves sign-in to Commodity. This is a correction to the team’s understanding, rather than a forecast that the component will evolve.
The next discussion: Should the team focus its own effort on customer workflows, while using a hosted sign-in service? The map makes that question easier to challenge; it does not validate an investment decision.
Shown here: a lightweight SVG illustration (example v1). The Harmonica app uses a dedicated SVG viewer and exports SVG, PNG and Mermaid wardley-beta source. Both example source files are checked in Mermaid 11.15.0; support in other tools depends on their Mermaid version. Read the source-format reference.
Explore Harmonica for consultants and for software architects, or co-design a session with us.
Why running a Wardley session is hard
Three problems strategy work keeps hitting
Maps that stay in someone's head
A Wardley conversation needs everyone in the room, but the map almost always gets drawn afterwards by one person who synthesizes notes. By the time it's shared back, the people in the conversation don't quite recognize it, and the map's authority is whatever they're willing to grant the person who drew it.
Async coordination is harder than sync, not easier
Strategy work spread across time zones loses the live argument that produces a good map. Async Miro boards turn into sticker piles. Async docs turn into bullet lists. Nothing that ends up looking like a Wardley map.
A screenshot loses the structure
A screenshot preserves how the map looks, but leaves out the component positions and dependencies that make it editable. Keep the source alongside the visual so the next facilitator can inspect the reasoning and continue the work.
How Harmonica helps
A map built from what the group said, not what one person remembered
The map is built from what the group said
Harmonica runs the Wardley conversation as a structured session: each participant contributes through the same flow, the AI facilitator asks follow-up questions, and the group’s contributions inform a suggested map. Review the placements against what people said, then correct assumptions that need more context.
Async-first, with sync as a finishing pass
Participants join in their own time, in their own language; the synthesis converges as they go. Use the live workshop for the calls that need a room, not for catching up on what the team already covered.
A visual map, with portable source
The app’s dedicated SVG viewer lets you inspect the map and export SVG or PNG. Its text export uses Mermaid’s Wardley syntax. Keep that source for reuse in a compatible renderer; check the destination’s Mermaid version before embedding it.
Built for this
Why Harmonica works for Wardley
Portable map exports. Use SVG or PNG in a document or deck, and keep the Mermaid wardley-beta source for a compatible renderer. Both worked-example source files above are checked in Mermaid 11.15.0.
Direct map correction. Fix component placement or evolution stage in one edit; everything around it updates. No round-trip through a separate diagramming tool.
Placements open to review. Treat the map as a shared interpretation of the conversation. Check it against participants’ contributions, surface disagreements, and make the corrections that the group can explain.
Chained sessions for multi-stage strategy. Pair the Wardley session with a follow-up (bottleneck identification, doctrine review, climatic-pattern surfacing) and the context from each stage carries into the next.
Cross-pollination across participants. On Pro, emerging themes are shared between conversations in real time, so the map converges instead of fragmenting into N personal versions.
Saved with the Project. The map sits alongside the session it came from in the host's Project view, with the participant summaries one click away.
Stop drawing maps after the conversation
Run your next Wardley session with the people in it. Review the map together, then export the visual and source for the next conversation. Free tier available, no credit card.