Wardley Maps - Explaining how OceanMind use Microsoft Azure & AI to combat Illegal Fishing

One of the main challenges our customers encounter when migrating their systems to Azure, is how to think about benefits and trade offs needed to get maximum value from the re-platforming. Wardley maps has proven to be an invaluable tool to provide everyone with a clear vision of the end goal and the journey on how to get there.

I'm a huge fan of Wardley mapping which is a wonderfully intuitive and effective means of communicating, exploring and collaborating on strategy. One of the main challenges our customers encounter when migrating their systems to Azure is how to think about benefits and trade offs needed to get maximum value from the re-platforming. Wardley maps has proven to be an invaluable tool to provide everyone with a clear vision of the end goal and the journey on how to get there.

This particular project centred on the challenge of solving illegal fishing which is having a devastating impact on the biodiversity of the world's oceans. Up to a third of all fish stocks are under threat which has serious consequences for both the environment and the health and livelihoods of people around the world. OceanMind are an organisation whose mission is to solve this problem. They do this by collecting billions of data points and use AI and machine learning to detect illegal fishing activity which they supply for law enforcement and compliance. Like many organizations, their aging on-premise systems were struggling to keep up with ambitions. As featured at Microsoft Future Decoded 2019, OceanMind with the help of endjin, embarked on a migration to Microsoft Azure.

During the project we applied Wardley maps to explain and justify the move to a serverless computing fabric. The maps also highlight some really interested and important consequences for the architecture. I've put together a short video which walks through a handful of the more interesting maps.

If you haven't come across Wardley mapping before and are keen to learn more, I strongly recommend reading Simon Wardley's excellent eBook on the subject.

Why not have a go at mapping your own digital transformation strategy? I'd love to see what you come up with. Feel free to send your maps to hello@endjin.com.