Wardley Mapping (James Urquhart) - Tech Leader Series #4

Minimum Viable Podcast (MVP)

There is a need to educate technology leaders across the Department of Defense and national security community with the frameworks and strategies to run digital transformation efforts.

This episode explores Wardley mapping: empowering leaders to understand the structure and ecosystem around a technology or service by mapping its components on dimensions like technology maturity and user value. In a defense and national security context, this allows leaders to better align their solution development trajectory and strategy with emerging market trends and user needs to optimize product-mission fit.

The insights from this event are designed to help defense leaders to deconstruct their technology and innovation development efforts like business cases, ensuring our energy and talent gets invested on the right problems.

James Urquhart is a proven technology executive, and a key influencer in the use of distributed systems technologies in the enterprise setting. Focusing on distributed systems development and operations, James has a background that includes both field and product leadership, with both start-ups and large corporations.

James is perhaps best known for his influence on the emerging cloud computing market over the last decade. Named one of the ten most influential people in cloud computing by the MIT Technology Review, The Next Web and the Huffington Post, and a former contributing author to GigaOm and CNET, James frequent writes and speaks to these disruptive technologies and the business opportunities they afford.

James played a key role in building the product, online service and related messaging for Enstratius, a start-up focused on multi-cloud management for the enterprise. Purchased by Dell in 2013 at a significant multiple, Enstratius was considered one of two leading first-generation multi-cloud VM management tools.

James's latest role as SVP of Product Management at leading Digital Performance Management platform vendor, SOASTA, immersed him in the world of data science, which has led to one of his current interests, distributed real-time data analytics and anomaly detection. James has even started a Medium publication to explore this subject at https://medium.com/digital-anatomy.

James has also played key strategic roles at Cisco and Dell, advising senior management on everything from product strategy to messaging.