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Do better with less

"Do better with less" is Wardley's reminder that efficiency is not about crude cost-cutting. It is the discipline of measuring value delivered, exposing waste, and reinvesting savings into higher-impact work. By pairing spend control with maps, organisations can simplify duplicated components, embrace open standards, and deliver better outcomes without ballooning budgets.

Why this doctrine matters​

  • Measurement keeps promises honest. Tracking cost per transaction, user satisfaction, and delivery lead times reveals whether improvement claims are real.
  • Waste hides opportunity cost. When teams surface duplicated systems and over-specified contracts, they release talent and capital for innovation.
  • Transparent frugality builds trust. Publishing performance data shows stakeholders that savings are achieved through better design, not service erosion.

Practices to embed​

  1. Map cost to user outcomes. Annotate the value chain with spend, contract terms, and utilisation so teams can see where money fails to translate into value.
  2. Run spend challenge reviews. Use cross-functional panels to interrogate big-ticket proposals and force alternatives such as reuse or commodity services.
  3. Adopt open standards and sourcing. Prefer interoperable components that avoid proprietary lock-in and make substitution cheaper.
  4. Ring-fence savings for reinvestment. Redirect released budget into discovery work, ecosystem experiments, or modernisation that further reduces total cost of ownership.

Watch for anti-patterns​

  • Slashing budgets indiscriminately, undermining critical capabilities instead of redesigning the work.
  • Reporting headline savings without publishing the underlying metrics or user impact.
  • Treating re-use as optional, leading to the same service being rebuilt in every department.

Questions to ask​

  • Where does our cost-to-serve exceed the value users receive, and why?
  • Which components on the map could we share, rent, or commoditise instead of custom-building again?
  • How will we demonstrate that savings improved the user experience as well as the balance sheet?
  • What reinvestment plan keeps the organisation improving once the obvious waste is removed?

Doing better with less is a flywheel. Each transparent improvement frees up resources that can be directed toward new user needs, making the organisation simultaneously leaner and more effective.