Blueprinting Facilitator Guide
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Blueprinting
Facilitator
Guide
Your step-by-step guide to running
practical service blueprinting
By Erik Flowers & Megan Erin Miller
www.practicalservicedesign.com
First Edition
Published January 2016
Revised May 28, 2017
Practical Service Design
By Erik Flowers & Megan Erin Miller
Designed and written in Palo Alto & Mountain View, CA
Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
www.practicalservicedesign.com
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This guide is a companion to our Guide to Practical Service
Blueprinting from our website www.practicalservicedesign.com,
so be sure to check that out before you dive in.
This facilitator guide gives you a detailed set of steps you can use
to facilitate blueprinting sessions, and will go over how to prepare
for and run the session.
Introduction
1. What You Will Need
1. Example Session Agenda
2. Facilitators
3. Working Session Group
3. Preparing Your Scenarios
4. Time and Space
4. Templates
5. Running the Session
7. After the Session
8. Join the Community
Table of Contents
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Preparing for the session
1-2 facilitators
6-15 key stakeholders
1.5-2 hours per scenario
A room with a big projector (or big walls)
Omnigrafe template (or butcher paper + stickies, markers)
5 minutes:
5 minutes:
10 minutes:
60 minutes:
5 minutes:
25 minutes:
10 minutes:
Introduction to goals of the workshop
Overview of the scenario
Review step denitions
Blueprinting
(break)
Review blueprint
Identify next scenario and repeat -or- Finished!
Example Session Agenda:
What You Will Need:
In this section we’ll cover how to prepare for a successful
practical service blueprinting session. Here are some quick
checklists to get you started.
Copy our more detailed example session agenda
online at www.practicalservicedesign.com/resources
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Each session needs one or two facilitators. The role of the
facilitator does not require advanced knowledge or extensive
experience with service design or the blueprinting process—
you can simply follow the guide and agenda.
Blueprinting Facilitator
The blueprint facilitator keeps the process moving and keeps
the group focused on the steps and providing the needed detail.
The role is all about inquiring and listening.
Subject Matter Facilitator
The subject matter facilitator knows the scenario and keeps
the group on target. They know enough about the “knowns
and unknowns” to prompt the group for additional information
critical to the blueprint. This is typically the project driver.
Someone to Build
Building the blueprint digitally requires someone do it on the
computer as you go; doing it with paper can be more of a group
project. This can be a facilitator, or a separate “scribe”.
One or Two Facilitators?
The blueprinting facilitator and the subject matter facilitator
can be the same person. However, it is very difcult to keep
the blueprint session moving forward without a subject matter
facilitator keeping the group on relevant areas of exploration.
Facilitators
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The blueprinting group members are there to represent the
scenario itself. If the scenario involves marketing, product
development, nance regulations, customer support, and
engineering, then a knowledgeable representative from those
groups would be strongly encouraged to be there.
Most blueprinting session should have between 6-15 people.
Fewer than that and you’re probably omitting big important
pieces; more than that and the conversation becomes unwieldy.
As outlined in the Practical Service Blueprinting guide, your
scenario use cases should be prepared at the high level—at the
least, outlined step-by-step in a document, and ideally mapped
out as the top layer of your blueprint template before the
session. It is possible to assemble the scenario step denitions
during the working session, but takes a considerable amount of
time to do so, and is best done ahead of time with your subject
matter facilitator.
The Working Session Group
Preparing Your Scenarios
3
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You’ll want to reserve a room that can accommodate all
members of your working session and also have a large
projector (if you are running your session digitally, which we
highly recommend), or enough wall space to allow for the
blueprint (if you are running your session physically).
Blueprinting can take 1.5-2 hours for each moderately complex
scenario. Additional scenarios in the same opportunity space
will often be shorter since there is overlap and redundancy with
the previous blueprints. On average, plan on reserving 1 hour of
focused work per additional blueprint.
We recommend using digital software, such as Omnigrafe to
build the blueprint in real-time. Use a projector to show changes
you are making in real-time. Get templates, examples and
tutorial videos on using our digital template online at
www.practicalservicedesign.com/resources.
If instead you want to do a hands-on working session, you will
need: A large surface (paper roll or foamcore board), printouts
for each step, different colored sticky notes for each type of
layer preferably, and a color key. Examples available at our
resources page above.
Time and Space
Templates
4
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For each scenario you are blueprinting, follow the steps below.
As the facilitator, you will be the one creating the blueprint in the
template le, while the subject matter facilitator prompts and
probes the group through discussion.
1. Get group on the same page
Review the scenario with the group, going over the high level
description ensuring everyone understands the use case.
2. Run through scenario
Quickly go through each of the step denitions from start to
nish so the group can hear the scenario in its entirety.
3. Start making your blueprint
Starting with the rst step, the facilitator prompts the group
to provide the information for each layer type. Example: “What
actors are present in this step?”or “Are there any systems that
support this step?” etc.
4. March across the columns
Move from step to step, lling in layers (see page 6), prompting
the group along the way to add their information. Use the layer
Running the session
5
You can ll in your blueprint a column at a time, working top-
down through each step, or you can work left-right by lling in
one layer style at a time, i.e. lling in all actors rst, then lling
in all systems, etc.
See the example video at our website here
Top-to-Bottom or Left-to-Right?
types as a checklist of sorts. When there doesn’t seem to be
any pertinent information left to add, move on to the next step
denition.
5. Run through scenario again to validate
Once the scenario has been eshed out to a reasonable degree,
go back and read through it with the details now added to look
for overlooked pieces, ideas, and critical moments.
6. Move on to the next scenario
When the scenario feels like it has documented the end-to-
end, surface-to-core picture, you can then move on to the next
scenario use case until you have all the scenarios you wanted to
blueprint completed for this session.
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Once you are nished with your scenario blueprinting, the
next step is to pull out your insights. The Practical Service
Blueprinting guide phases 4-6 are what come next, where you
do the following:
1. Collect all critical moments and ideas
Take your critical moments and ideas out of your blueprint
format, and get them all in one place. For this work, you can
do physical card sorting, a spreadsheet, a ticketing system—
whatever method works for you and your team.
2. Group into themes
We suggest physical sorting as the quickest way to engage a
group of stakeholders in grouping insights. Once you create
groups, name them. These will be your overarching themes.
3. Identify strategic and tactical xes
Within each theme, you are looking for larger strategic directions
that might shift the vision of the service, as well as tactical
xes—things you can just go do now.
Following through on the output is the purpose of blueprinting,
and how you’ll make an impact on your organization.
After the Session
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Tweet us at: @erik_owers & @meganerinmiller
Email us: hello@practicalservicedesign.com
www.practicalservicedesign.com
Join the growing virtual community of practice for service
designers around the globe on Slack. We believe the best way
to grow our craft is together, through practice. We hope this
facilitator guide has been a helpful tool in running practical
service blueprinting.
We’d love to hear how it went! Join the #blueprinting channel in
the Slack and ask questions or make comments to the creators
of this format.
Join the community today:
http://www.practicalservicedesign.com/community
Join the Community
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Ready for more? Take our new online
course on Practical Service Blueprinting!
Map out key scenarios. Solve end-to-end problems. Facilitate your
rst service blueprinting session! All at www.servicedesign.school
All in this complete Practical Service Blueprinting online course —
go at your own pace and learn with rich video and learning content!
You will learn what it takes to organize and run a service blueprinting workshop,
synthesize the output and generate actionable work for your organization, and grow
your service design skills as a trained service blueprinting facilitator!
Go to www.servicedesign.school today and enroll —
use the coupon code “EBOOK” for 25% off!
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