A Milky Way Map is a visual representation of the whole business or some part of it. A Milky Way Map is a visualisation of the geography of the business of the enterprise. It shows the big picture in a single view, including what are the customer activities or tasks to be done, and how the enterprise serves those tasks, and why the enterprise is doing all this. The Milky Way Map combines the customer’s perspective and the enterprise’s business perspective. All in one map, the Enterprise Map.
Customer Insight + Business Insight
The Milky Way Map provides an overall insight into the business of an enterprise, aligned with the customer insight information. The Milky Way Map can be used as a communication model & method from managers to developers, for everybody who is interested in business design and what is happening in and around the enterprise. The Milky Way Map brings together the customer perspective and the enterprise business perspective. From customer tasks via operations to business goals.
Communication
The Milky Way Map is at its best in communication and knowledge sharing between the decision-makers, development teams etc. The idea is simple: the overview of an enterprise is provided within a map. This image makes it easier for us to construct a common, shared mental model and to associate entities.
A Milky Way Map is a visualisation of the business.
The Milky Way Map is analogous to the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek introduced in the book Start With Why. In the famous TED talk (link) Sinek explains the story of the Golden Circle as follows: “most of the organisations know WHAT they do, some organisations know HOW they do it, but only a few organisations know WHY they do what they do. And the organisations that are concentrated on ‘why they do what they do’, are the most successful according to Sinek (he uses Apple as an example). By WHY Sinek means the purpose, the cause and beliefs of why the organization exists. The clearest thing is the what, and the fuzziest thing is the why. Sinek explains that inspired organisations think, act and communicate from the inside-out, starting from the why.
- What = products provided and/or services offered, or the role in people’s lives (Experience)
- How = operational activities such as processes, and resources such as employees and applications (Architecture)
- Why = purpose, cause, beliefs, values, principles etc. The ‘core’ that explains everything else. (Identity)
The Milky Way Map consists of the same onion rings as in the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek. The idea behind the Milky Way Map is to combine the different perspectives, disciplines, and stakeholder groups together, and provide a common map of the enterprise that resonates with everybody: service designers, architects, business leaders, product and/or service owners, designers, developers, operational staff, not to forget customers, partners, owners, suppliers etc. Every distinct discipline and each professional specialist involved with the enterprise can find the Milky Way Map familiar. It is an informative and easy way to understand what is happening in and around the enterprise and its business.
The Milky Way Map combines the different perspectives, disciplines and stakeholders.
The Milky Way base Map
The Milky Way Map is divided into sectors, that represent the value stages of the business value flow (a.k.a. value stream). The customer journey steps (or tasks) are shown on the outer circle. The capabilities are positioned in the middle circle, and the purposes, the goals for each value stage are shown in the inner circle. The business value flow can consist of sectors such as Plan, Build, Market, Deliver, and Learn. The Milky Way base Map is shown below.
Figure: Milky Way base Map.
The Milky Way Map covers dimensions of the enterprise design as follows:
- Y-axis: Strategic aspects on the bottom left corner, operational aspects on the top left corner
- X-axis: Sourcing and marketing aspects in the bottom left corner, delivery and learning aspects in the bottom right corner.
The base map version above is just showing the basic idea of the Milky Way Map. There can be variations of the Milky Way Map depending on the case and what is appropriate. For example, value flow stages (sectors) can be defined according to the business, which can be anything from the whole enterprise to some specific business area. Circles and their elements can be used according to what is necessary, e.g. tasks, journeys or channels, capabilities or processes etc. The Milky Way Map can be configured to fit for the purpose.
The Milky Way Map is where the customer needs (tasks) meet the business goals (purposes) in the operations (capabilities).
Business Analysis with the Milky Way Map
The Milky Way Map can be used for diverse business analysis, as the Milky Way Map is the map of the business. The Milky Way Map represents the whole business or some part of the business. It can cover e.g. a specific value flow (a.k.a. value stream), a specific business area (such as business unit) or a specific service area (e.g. related to a specific end to end customer journey).
The Milky Way Map combines the why, what and how by bringing together the enterprise’s outcome elements, Purposes, Tasks and Capabilities. (For more information see Enterprise Design Elements). The Milky Way Map can be filled in any order, according to what is appropriate and fit for the case. From the customer perspective (outside-in), or from the organisation perspective (inside-out).
With the Milky Way Map it is possible to contextualise the capabilities from the enterprise’s capability map by positioning them into the value flow. This visualizes which capabilities are performed and when, which capabilities are closer to the customer, and which are supporting those customer-facing ones. The purposes in the center of the Milky Way Map, represent the goals for each value flow stage, showing why the enterprise is doing and what it is pursuing. The journey steps or tasks on the outer circle represent the customer journey, and also the tasks of the other stakeholder groups (such as partners, owners, job candidates etc.) that have some interest in the business of the enterprise.
With the Milky Way Map it is possible to assess whether the enterprise’s goals and operations are aligned with the customer needs. If there are contradictions between customer needs and the enterprise’s goals or operations, then there can be some problems in the strategic goals for example. As such, the Milky Way Map makes the overall business of the enterprise visible and subject to critical assessment and analysis, which enables enterprise designers to adjust the operations and goals to respond to the needs of the customers. The contradictions between customer needs and enterprise operations or goals, are a signs of problems in the operating model and/or strategic goals.
Compatible or contradictory? The Milky Way Map makes it visible if our goals are concrete, or are too abstract? Are our goals realistic and close to our operational business, what do we do with our capabilities? And what is most important, are our goals related to our customers’ needs? All this can be mapped within a one-pager visualisation, which can be versioned with more details whenever appropriate. The Milky Way Map makes visible our customers’ needs, our operations and goals, and exposes either their a) compatibility or b) contradictory.
The Milky Way Map can be used for analysing whether our goals and operations are aligned with our customers’ needs.
Experience Focus
The example below illustrates an education or training business from the customer’s perspective. Customer tasks, the needs; are positioned in the outer circle of the Milky Way Map…
Tasks = what our customers need, and what they want to get done, Capabilities = what we do in our operations, Purposes = what we want to do, and what are our goals.
Figure: Focus on customer tasks (needs), the overview.
The Milky Way Map is a tool for analysing the strategic goals and operations against the needs of the customers.
The version below illustrates the customer journey steps together with customer tasks, against which the operational capabilities can be observed. This makes it possible to see whether the operations and goals of the enterprise fit for the needs of the customers.
Figure: Focus on experience within the Customer Journey.
Service Focus
The Milky Way Map can be used for mapping products and/or services to customer tasks (needs) for analysing a) what services we offer and b) what new opportunities we may have: what new or modified services we can provide to serve and support customer tasks.
Figure: Focus on customer tasks (needs).
Organisation Focus
The Milky Way Map can be overlayed with the organisation structures to illustrate the responsibilities of the capabilities. For example, organisation elements are positioned on the top of the capabilities and adjusted with transparency, so that capabilities underneath can be seen. This enables us to analyse the responsibilities of the changes concerning operational business capabilities.
Figure: Focusing on organisation structures over the capabilities.
Business Budgeting and Investment Portfolio Management Focus
When analysing the operational and/or development costs, we can add labels on the elements illustrating the financial criteria that we are interested in. For example, to illustrate how much certain changes cost in our business transformation, we can add labels indicating the monetary efforts we are making. This view can be valuable in investment portfolio management purposes, where we examine all the ongoing business change efforts.
Figure: Budget analysis.
Architecture Focus
Figure: Architecture view with data flows.
Enterprise Maps
The Milky Way Map can be used in conjunction with other maps of the enterprise, such as the Purpose Map (Goal Map), Capability Map, Organisation Map, Application Map, Process Map and Product and/or Service Map. The Milky Way Map is the most comprehensive of them all, as it covers all the perspectives of enterprise design (see more details of the Enterprise Design perspectives: link). The Milky Way Map can be configured into any combination of these aspects and their elements according to what is appropriate and fit for the purpose.
A Milky Way Map can be configured according to what is appropriate and fit for the purpose.
Task Map
When customers’ tasks are identified, they can be grouped and visualised in a Task Map, from which they can be taken into the Milky Way Map. Tasks represent what people want to achieve and get done. They form the core of customer insight. Tasks explain what are the needs of the customer that the enterprise can serve and support.
Figure: Task Map.
Purpose Map
An enterprise’s Purpose Map (a.k.a. Goal Map) is typically created at the strategic level, but one can be defined for any change initiative such as for a large business transformation program or for smaller change activities (e.g. concepts). Purposes (goals) can be positioned in the Milky Way Map innermost circle.
Figure: Purpose Map.
Capability Map
The Capability Map is another base map of the enterprise, a master base map. It shows what an enterprise does, ordered into the following groups of capabilities: 1) Customer-facing, 2) Core business operations, 3) Support and 4) Change. The capability map, if defined, can be used as preliminary material for the Milky Way Map. If there is no distinct capability map already defined in the organisation, the Milky Way Map can be used for harvesting the business capabilities. That can be done with the help of maps if available and applicable, e.g. process map, service map or product map, organisation map etc.
Information flows can be visualised between the capabilities as shown in the diagram below. However, including these information flows in the Milky Way Map is preferable, where the capabilities are positioned in the value flow of the enterprise. This makes it easier to communicate the purpose of each capability, as their reason for being is justified by the value flow. The value flow, in turn, can be visualised in a distinct diagram such as value stream with capabilities. However, the Milky Way Map is much more informative as it introduces the customer view in the outer circle, and also the business goals in the inner circle.
Figure Capability interactions.
Application Map
Applications can be taken from the application map to the Milky Way Map, if the data flows are to be shown.
Rather than between the capabilities, the data flows are defined between the applications as shown in the figure below.
Figure: Application cooperation view.
Data flows between applications of the capabilities can be added to the Milky Way Map. These data flows can be added to the Milky Way Map, if we value a single source, one big picture of the business operations.
The Milky Way Map can be configured by highlighting or hiding certain elements. For example, customer journey steps can be added when appropriate, only context-specific capabilities can be included, applications or products and/or services can be added etc. The content of the Milky Way Map depends on the case: what is appropriate and fit for the purpose.
Figure: Data flows between applications.
The Milky Way Map = map of the enterprise.
EDGY tools
The Enterprise Design language, EDGY, from the Intersection Group, enables people to design well-designed outcomes for better enterprises!
EDGY diagrams can be created with several tools, such as:
- Draw.io (available as Confluence plugin, which enables lots of features for combining diagrams, text and tables)
- Miro
- QualiWare
- BlueDolphin
- Powerpoint
More to come.
EDGY stencils (+ lots of information) can be found on the Intersection Group’s Enterprise Design with EDGY pages:
References
- Milky Way Enterprise Map Webinar, 2023-02-15, Wolfgang Goebl and Annika Klyver, link.
- Milky Way Webinar 09032022, by Milan Guenther and Annika Klyver. Video: link.
- Annika Klyver’s blog covering the Milky Way Map, link.
[1] Intersection Group pages, https://intersection.group
[2] Enterprise Design with EDGY pages, https://enterprise.design/
[3] EDGY language foundations, book, 2023, (available as pdf), link
[4] EDGY 23 Language Foundations, Online course (4 weeks), Milan Guenther & Wolfgang Goebl, link
[5] Enterprise Design Patterns, Intersection Group book, 2020, (available as pdf), link
[6] EDGY 23 product release, launch on 29th March 2023, webinar recording, Milan Guenther & Wolfgang Goebl, link
Inspired by the book The Milky Way – map, navigate and accelerate change by Cecilia Nordén.
Enterprise Design with EDGY – for creating well-designed outcomes for better enterprises.
There is an analogy between the Milky Way Map and the real Milky Way galaxy, in which the center of gravity keeps the objects in surrounding circles where they are going around.
The Milky Way Map enables a comprehensive overview of the enterprise and its business. The Milky Way Map is the pathway to more detailed descriptions of the identity, architecture and experience perspectives, via the core elements, purposes, capabilities and tasks.
Milky Way Map structure.
This content is continuously updated.
— Eero Hosiaisluoma