Wardley "value chain" Mapping is a technique for understanding your business (including technology) landscape. It's based upon two important principles of situational awareness - position of things and movement and it starts with user needs. Situational awareness is critical from operations to strategic play but "Why No Consultants?"
1) Mapping requires an understanding of the environment which means you need people working within the environment to described the landscape.
2) Mapping is a communication tool. It empowers people to take control of their environment and through sharing remove bias, duplication and silos.
3) Mapping is a learning tool, it enables you to discover what patterns work and helps improve your gameplay.
Now, unless you intend to hand over understanding of your landscape, communication, empowerment, strategy and learning to a consultancy (i.e. basically become totally dependent upon them) then you need to learn to map yourself within the organisation. I'm sure many consultants would like you to become dependent as they can gouge fees from you from now to the end of your business.
In UK Gov, there are now several departments mapping, sharing maps, learning and teaching each other. There's a reason why I made mapping creative commons. It was to give every organisation a means to communicate, learn and improve situational awareness and not to help consultants flog more stuff. Don't squander the gift.
