ℹ️ Skip to key parts of the session by clicking on the chapter dots along the timeline.

Session highlights

• Service Maps can help align different Product Owners / departments in the business to see how their slice of the pie adds up to the whole. 
• It gives teams permission to change what's around them, by showing them what's possible when a clear picture of the service is presented.
• It also helps to change the conversation to experience, not functionality. It gets everyone thinking about the end-to-end.
• The most important thing to remember: the map isn't as important as the conversations you have along the way.

How to facilitate a Service Map session with your team

• If your team gets stuck, don't hold back on filling the answer that comes to your mind - but don't complete the service map by yourself with an audience!
• Be clear on who your customer/user is, and what you are trying to map. Otherwise, you will find it challenging to decide what aspects to capture, ultimately slowing you down.
• Map the physical steps and interactions a user takes. Not how they are feeling or thinking. These are layers that can be added on top (experiment! make the map yours. there is no right or wrong. this is only a starting point)
• If something doesn't make sense or you aren't sure - don't be afraid to ask your team. There is no right and wrong answer. Only what makes sense to you, and what you feel is the best reflection of what is happening. If that means combining steps for the sake of clarity, then that's fine.
• Service maps have to be imperfect to be clear enough to communicate. If they had too much detail, they would be ineffective at telling the story of the service.

Questions to ask during the session:

•  "Is it worthwhile to include this step?"
• "Is this level of detail necessary for us to understand a typical journey in a service?"
• "How far do we want to go with this bit?"
• "Do we need to know what systems make the door work?" 

Parts of a Service Map

• The individual actions a customer or user takes in our service.

• What actors (human or not) are our customer/user interacting with each step?
• There may be steps where nothing is interacted with. That's okay.
• You can extend a front stage actor across multiple steps (just double up some sticky notes).
• We tend to only interact with one thing at a time. If you find you have multiple interactions in one step, it's likely that action needs to be split into more stages.
• A user can still passively interact with something - it may be receiving information from something such as a sign.

• What actor is working outside of the customer/users view to make a Front stage actor function?
• Example: kitchen staff are a backstage actor, who receive an order from the front stage actor, the clerk at the counter.
• The front-stage/backstage sticky notes should represent an object (noun), only the Customer journey can contain verbs. 

• What is happening 'backstage' of the backstage actor? What system is allowing them to function?
• Example, the exchange of information between kitchen staff and clerk uses a order-taking system (AKA a tab grabber)
• Another example, a backstage actor might be the fry cook, the underlying system for them to do their job is the kitchen.

• Arrows help you understand the direction information flows. 
• Does information go one way, or back and forth?
• Seeing the flow of information can help us understand how systems interact, so we can improve them.
• Arrows are only useful for information exchange, not for just an interaction. Otherwise, you'll have arrows everywhere, and they lose their purpose.

• Capture ideas for improvement at each step in the ideas swim-lane.
• Look for down-times in a customer journey to find opportunities, not just optimisation areas but areas for delight. 
• Look for gaps where they could become frustrated, ask: how do we shorten that time or use that time more effectively?

• Use the Evidence slim-lane to build up context for each step, so it creates a "richer picture" of the service. 
• Photographs put weight behind your service map and help tell the story.

• Give a participant one bomb each to place where they feel is the most 'dangerous' area on the map. 
• This gives the team a shared understanding of where they should focus their efforts. 
• This might be a pain point, a bottleneck, or a ripe area of opportunity.

Questions & Answers

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- Dave Cunningham, Head of DesignOps @ NHS