A practical, hands-on guide for uncovering what really matters — and designing your teams around it
“Most teams don’t suffer from a lack of effort — they suffer from a lack of alignment.”
User Needs Mapping is your blueprint for realigning your teams around the people they serve. Whether you’re leading a digital transformation, scaling a product organization, or simply trying to reduce internal friction, this book shows you how to expose the invisible forces that are holding your teams back — and what to do about them.
🚀 Get notified at launch
Want to be the first to know when the book is available?
Sign up and we’ll send you:
- A launch announcement with a direct link to buy
- Exclusive early access to tools, templates, or bonus resources
- Invitations to live events, author Q&As, and behind-the-scenes updates
We’ll only email you about the book — no spam, ever.
👥 Who’s it for?
- Leaders looking to create clarity, focus, and alignment
- Change agents and facilitators running workshops and transformations
- Product and platform teams seeking smoother flow and fewer handoffs
- Team Topologies practitioners looking for an outside-in approach to team design
- Anyone stuck in the maze of inside-out thinking
📚 What’s inside?
- 💡 A step-by-step guide to the User Needs Mapping technique
- 🔍 Real-world case study from scaling a company
- 🧠 Tools to identify misaligned team boundaries and dependency overload
- 🧭 Techniques to guide better team and service design decisions
- 🤝 Approaches for managing tension across teams and stakeholders
“Grounded, practical, and refreshingly visual — this book turns alignment from a buzzword into something you can actually do.”
✨ Why register to be notified?
- 🛠️ Help shape the conversation around fast flow and user-centric team design
- 💬 Get notified about launch events, webinars, and Q&A sessions
- 📦 Be among the first to get the book when it ships
👋 About the Author
Richard Allen is one of the longest-serving Team Topologies Valued Practitioners and the creator of User Needs Mapping. He’s spent over two decades helping organizations reduce friction, evolve team boundaries, and align around what truly matters — faster flow of value to meet user needs.
💬 What people are saying
“User Needs Mapping has helped us to identify previously unseen ways of organizing our teams and was a valuable part of applying Team Topologies at Passenger.”
— Tom Quay, CEO, Passenger
“It’s much easier to communicate where and how AI is influencing a user or customer need with UNM than customer journey maps or service blueprints.”
— Ross Langley, Head of Product Design, Fresh
Want to be featured here? Register your interest and share your thoughts.
📩 Stay in the loop
Sign up for launch updates, early excerpts, and bonus material: