Why and when service blueprints can help you and your team
A while ago I wrote a quick article about some of the ways you could speed up your team with a service blueprint, and I want to use some further experience of working with service blueprints to expand on that a little more. I also want to offer some thoughts on further uses for the blueprint in enabling organisational change and having a direct positive impact on the customer experience.
FYI, I’m not a blueprint salesman, I’m just using these couple of posts to reflect on and share some of the things I’ve observed in the hope it might be useful to someone else. Let me know if it is!
Key benefits of using a service blueprint
After writing my last post on the topic I was invited to talk at a local meetup in Nottingham, UK (I reflected on that separately here). My talk focused on some of the benefits I’ve seen that come from using service blueprints with cross-functional teams.
I’ll summarise them here before talking briefly about some of the different use cases for blueprints.
Building a full picture
When teams get together to work on projects or deliver a product or service to a customer they can often find there’s no commonly held view about how everything works. The blueprint helps get to that view and as it’s being created I’ve seen it help people understand what other people in the team and across the organisation actually do, which in some cases can be a bit of a revelation.
Making it visible
It can be really helpful to get your blueprint up on a wall so people can gather around a shared view they’ve developed together and explore, share and explain how elements of it work. I’ve wallpapered a fairly significant area in the last couple of years and never miss the opportunity to talk to people who have stopped by to take a look. Those conversations often result in people knowing a bit more about a particular customer journey, or a request for support in something they’re doing.
Managing levels of detail
The service blueprint can provide a really helpful structure for conversations which allows people to navigate between different levels of detail from strategic to detailed. In a workshop environment it can help everyone manage their focus and avoid confusion or talking at cross purposes.
Questions, so many questions…
One of the challenges in trying to understand an end to end customer journey and the structures that enable it can be the sheer volume of questions that arise. The blueprint can help by organising the questions against the steps in the journey and setting them in context. It’s much easier to manage than a flip chart full of questions that someone needs to take away and write up.
Giving a shortcut to delivery
Having a blueprint can also be a step towards building a delivery plan. One of the change managers I was working with could see the potential for using a future-state service blueprint as a tool to help him create a delivery plan. It shows what’s needed to deliver the experience you’re aiming to give your customers and as a result it gives a shortcut to a gap analysis to show what needs to be built.
How blueprints can add further value
Since writing my initial post and talking about it at a handful of design meet ups in my area I’ve spent another 12+ months using blueprints day-to-day with a range of product teams and stakeholders in a large multi-national organisation with some complex structures and all the ambiguity that goes along with operating in that kind of environment.
Having covered some of the reasons WHY a blueprint can be useful I want to quickly offer some thoughts on WHEN a blueprint can help and why.
There are two places where I’ve seen benefits and an emerging third space which potentially legitimises blueprints as an organisational tool that could be fundamental to effectively managing change.
Starting something new
Mapping journeys and considering how supporting systems will work can help speed up product development. A service blueprint can work as a lightweight prototype and I’ve used it to bring clarity and focus to the work that needs to be done to move a product forward. As mentioned above, future-state blueprints can help identify work that needs to be done and who needs to do it.
Managing something that exists
A service blueprint provides a useful framework for ongoing performance management of a product/service. Regular reviews of customer feedback and service measures against the blueprint can help identify opportunities to improve the customer experience and have a positive impact on a business.
Managing and delivering change
The final place a blueprint could have potential is as a recognised tool within the change community. One of my final acts before leaving my last job was to set the scene for service blueprinting to be part of a new project delivery framework. We recognised the potential for blueprints to provide some shortcuts for people trying to understand the impact a change to a particular system or process might have on the customer experience, and so baked their use into the way projects were set up. One of the first questions a project manager would be asking is “We’re planning to change this system/process, where are the related service blueprints?”.
I’d love to hear from anyone who’s used blueprints beyond a single project and attempted to develop them as an integral part of the way change is managed. What’s your experience been? What are the challenges and how have you solved them? One of the challenges I’ve hit is the ongoing ownership and maintenance of service blueprints. Do you have any tools to recommend that help with that?
I am on a constant learning journey so if you know of alternatives to blueprints that work better in delivering some of the things I’ve discussed I’d be interesting in hearing about them too.
If you found this interesting please give it a clap and share it with any friends and colleagues who have an interest in service design and blueprinting as an activity.
Find me on twitter @pjmoran where I’m generally talking service design and instagram @pauljosephmoran for #tenminutedrawingclub
