User Needs Mapping: Aligning Teams Around What Matters

User Needs Mapping is a technique I developed to help organisations reason about who they serve, what those users truly need, and how work flows through the organisation to meet those needs. Unlike customer journey maps or value stream maps, User Needs Mapping:

  • Focuses on needs rather than solutions or activities

  • Makes both external and internal users visible

  • Connects needs directly to capabilities, teams, and decisions

  • Helps reveal where responsibility, ownership, and flow break down

The result is a shared, visual model of the organisational landscape — one that makes misalignment visible without blame.

Why it matters

When teams are organised around assumptions rather than needs:

  • Ownership becomes unclear

  • Dependencies multiply

  • Teams optimise locally

  • Delivery slows and trust erodes

A set of three colorful shapes, with orange, silver, and teal colors, laid overlapping each other.
Book cover titled "User Needs Mapping: Aligning Teams Around What Matters" by Rich Allen with forewords by Simon Wardley and Matthew Skelton, featuring illustrations of interconnected nodes and a simple smiling stick figure.

User Needs Mapping provides a stable reference point for reasoning about team design, prioritisation, and change — even as the organisation evolves.

Below you’ll find links to purchase the book in your preferred marketplace, or to arrange a bulk order for your team or organisation.

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Looking to share User Needs Mapping with your team or organisation?

We offer a 10% discount on bulk purchases of 50 or more copies.

Ideal for:

  • Internal book clubs and learning groups

  • Workshop and training cohorts

  • Organisational transformation initiatives

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