Chapter 2 Flashcards — Three Maps
flashcards tsep three-maps westrum org-culture local-maximum
What are the Three Maps a staff engineer needs?
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- Locator map — where you (your team/project) fit in the broader organizational and technical landscape
- Topographical map — what your organization’s culture looks like: how power flows, how decisions get made, where the obstacles and shortcuts are
- Treasure map — where the organization is headed technically, why that direction was chosen, and what the path looks like
What is a local maximum and why do staff engineers need to avoid it?
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A local maximum is a situation where a team is doing the best possible work in its immediate context while missing larger opportunities or creating broader problems. Example: a team spends a year making an internal tool 10x faster without realizing the organization has decided to replace it. The locator map prevents this by maintaining awareness of how local work fits the broader mission.
What are the six cultural axes of the topographical map?
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- Secret ↔ Open — how freely information flows
- Oral ↔ Written — where decisions are recorded and how remote influence works
- Top-down ↔ Bottom-up — whose buy-in matters for decisions
- Fast/reactive ↔ Deliberate/slow — pace of change and risk tolerance
- Back channels ↔ Front doors — whether relationships or process get things done
- Allocated ↔ Available — whether teams have slack or are always at capacity; Liquid ↔ Crystallized — whether influence transfers with you or stays with a position
What are Westrum’s three organizational types?
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- Pathological — cooperation is discouraged, failure is scapegoated, information is withheld
- Bureaucratic — cooperation is tolerated, failure is ignored/contained, information flows through narrow channels
- Generative — cooperation is encouraged, failure is investigated and learned from, information is actively sought
Generative organizations outperform on software delivery (DORA research) because they process information better and recover from failure faster.
What are the three terrain obstacles in the topographical map?
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- Chasms — gaps between teams where information, work, or help falls in and disappears; nobody bridges them
- Fortresses — teams that protect their domain aggressively; getting anything from them requires special effort
- Disputed territory — areas where ownership is genuinely unclear; often the source of projects that never happen
What is a shadow org chart?
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The informal power structure that often determines how decisions really get made, distinct from the formal reporting hierarchy. Understanding it means knowing: whose objection can kill a project, who people consult before big decisions, whose approval is needed even if they’re not formally in the review chain, and which informal networks shape prioritization. Staff engineers must navigate the shadow org chart to move work across boundaries.
What is the tech tree analogy for the treasure map?
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Like a technology tree in a strategy game, an organization’s technical trajectory has dependencies — you can’t build capability C until you have B, and B requires A. The treasure map shows the destination (where you’re going), the path (what needs to happen in sequence), and the dependencies (what must exist before what). Staff engineers often drive parts of this journey; without the map, they can’t tell if their work is on the critical path or a sideshow.
Why is sharing the treasure map valuable?
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Teams working on components of the journey often can’t see how their piece connects to the whole. When they can see the destination and their place in the path, they can make better local decisions that align with the broader direction — without needing to escalate every choice. Sharing the map converts organizational context into distributed good judgment.