When we start working together, one of the first things we can do is look at one or more standard frameworks to test ideas and assumptions against. This helps us to analyze your situation, your business, your needs, and your goals. There are plenty of very well-known frameworks out there that can be of great help, like the SWOT Analysis, the Boston Consulting Group Matrix, Porter's Five Forces, and others.

Here at Fluxus, we like to look a little deeper.

Over our experience in digital business transformation, we've come across strategy frameworks that go into more specific detail, with clearly-outlined intentions and inventive perspectives. Even better, we know from experience that these methods work. We will work through one or more of these strategic frameworks together, offering you a unique, fine-tuned outlook on how to get where your business needs to go.

Take a look at some of the strategies we can introduce to you.

Wardley Mapping

Your strategy is deeply connected to understanding – understanding of your position, of your capabilities, and how you can leverage these to accomplish your goals. The Wardley Mapping strategic technique focuses on just this: situational awareness. When you better understand your situation, you can make context-influenced decisions. Rather than trying to replicate what may have worked for others or even for you in the past, look into why. This more nuanced approach can inform better decision-making for your future based on exactly what's going on around you.

Strategic decision-making with the Wardley Mapping technique is based on these five important elements. Hover over each to learn more.

• Purpose: This is your "why". Your main objective that you're trying to reach.
• Landscape: This is where a map comes in handy. Your landscape is a description of the competitive environment you're operating in.
• Climate: Expanding on your map, these are any external forces that can affect your environment.
• Doctrine: This involves how you train your team. How are they being prepared to operate within your landscape?
• Leadership: Following the previous four factors, this is the final strategy stage. Being informed by the factors before it, it is context-specific.

Considering these factors helps you construct a map. Here's a basic breakdown of what a map might look like. Hover over components to find out more about them.

• User: These people or parties are who you're creating value for. This map helps you understand their needs, how you can meet them, and what you need to meet them.
• Need: This represents the problems you'll be solving for your end user. How does your strategy create the value they're looking for?
• Capability: To meet your users' needs, you need to determine your capabilities. How direct is the value they provide? Also, how available are these capabilities; do they need to be custom-built or are they commodities? The axes of this map help you visualize the answers to these questions.
• Value Chain (y-axis): On this axis, you represent how visible or invisible your capabilities are. In other words, how direct and obvious is the value they present to your users? Is it something they interact with? Or is it more behind-the-scenes?
• Evolution (x-axis): This axis shows each of your capabilities' stage of evolution. It ranges from the "Genesis" level, where you'd be conceptualizing and creating it by yourselves, to the "Commodity" level, where it's something that's readily-available. This classification helps you determine what you'll need to buy, outsource, or build and develop in-house.

Impact Mapping

An important element of your strategy is how your planning will relate to and effect what's going on around it at the same time. This includes team members, clients, or other projects and strategies. Without carving out a clear relationship between your strategy and its environment, you can lose perspective of what the strategy hopes to achieve, as well as hurt the strength of connections you'll need to make your strategy happen.

Impact Maps are dynamic and adaptable, as well as being fast and easy to set up. This allows both stakeholders and delivery teams quickly visualize a project's roadmap. Here's an example of an Impact Map. Take a look how the parts come together, and hover over each part for more information.

• Why: This is your main goal. What do you hope to achieve or accomplish?
• Who: Branching out from your goal are actors. This is anyone or anything that can achieve, hinder, benefit from, or be affected in any way by the goal.
• How: After determining the actors, it's time to consider their impacts. What exactly is their role in relation to the goal? What effect do we need them to have?
• What: Finally, you can determine how your team will bring those impacts to reality. These concrete steps that you'll take are your deliverables. These can range from activities, to resources, to software features.

By considering your deliverables directly in the context of how they support the impacts you want to see, you're able to streamline your strategy. Impact Mapping gives you a clear picture of where you should be focusing on, and it's something that everyone involved can easily understand. It puts your strategy in terms that make sense for the environment it's in.

Cynefin Framework

Problem solving is a big part of any strategy, especially from a leadership position. Project managers, team leaders, or other stakeholders know that problem solving isn't something you can approach with the same mindset every time. It's important to know how to respond to various types of situations so you're able to turn it around.

This is where the Cynefin Framework comes in. This framework can be used to understand different kinds of situations. A better understanding leads to better decision-making, meaning you'll know how to problem-solve in different circumstances by applying this framework.

Cynefin is broken into five domains. These domains can be used to assess a situation based on cause and effect. Hover over each domain to learn more about each one.

• Obvious: This is the clearest situation you can be in. Your options are clear, as are the steps to take. Here, you'll want to sense – fully take your situation into account, categorize – identify it, and respond – react to the situation according to the clear options available to you.
• Complicated: As the name implies, this is where your situation might get more complicated. Rather that a set "right" answer, there might be a few viable solutions. Here, you should sense – assess the situation, analyze – explore the situation in greater detail (maybe consult an expert), and respond – go with the course of action your analysis recommends.
• Complex: In this kind of situation, there might not be any clear solutions, and it can easily get confusing. if your problem is complex, you can probe – explore the problem in greater detail, sense – see if your exploration better explains your situation, and respond – base your reaction on the what you've discovered. This kind of situation lends itself to a lot of experimentation, so don't worry if a clear course doesn't appear immediately.
• Chaotic: A chaotic situation is essentially a crisis. There's no relationship between cause and effect, and you need to get the situation under control. First, act – determine the most important issues, sense – find out what you need to do to stabilize, and respond – get started moving this from this stage to the complex stage.
• Disorder: A disorderly situation means the other domains can't be clearly used to figure out where you stand. The most important thing to do is gather enough information to place your position in any of the main four domains.

This framework excels in clearing up the fog of an untested and unfamiliar situation. This sort of problem solving heavily relies on communication and how well your team can work together.

At Fluxus, we put a lot of importance on a good strategy. Our teams are well-prepped to implement the kinds of strategy that they know will work on the projects they work on, and as your consultants, we can recommend a framework to analyze your situation in a way that will get results.