“Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.” Conway’s Law tells us that information flows through service experiences with the same ease as information passing between teams in an organization. When teams are aligned and well-coupled, experiences flow smoothly.

As organizations grow in size and complexity, the connection between a team’s activities and how it impacts the user’s experience of the product or service becomes faint, forgotten or even eliminated. The intended value of the work may not materialize for anyone—neither the team who created it, nor the users who face an increasingly incoherent experience. 

A clear view of the larger arc of journey and the organizational systems supporting it will highlight opportunities by identifying misalignment: structural mismatch between the arc of a core user experience and its information pathways through teams and organizational support systems. Identifying these mismatches provide opportunities to improve service experience by optimizing or redesigning the team and communication structures supporting service delivery.

Service blueprints force teams to learn about the “back-stage” drivers in the organization and the customer. With pre-existing user insight or the knowledge of archetypal journeys, most of the work to develop the blueprint is in understanding the organizational back-stage processes from knowledge that is distributed and silo’d in-house. Consider, for key experiences, the range of teams who may be involved, enabling, or dependent on each part of a journey—if you expect them to change how they work, gain buy-in by involving them from the start of the process.

Therefore, identify which experiences and journeys are core to the product or service. Model the flow of these journeys—their phases, touchpoints, user experience—and prioritize the narratives most essential to good user outcomes. Along those journeys, chart how user information depends on various teams, systems, and pathways through organization. Work with the full range of stakeholders invested in a given journey to build this picture. Identify the inefficiencies that cause experience breakdowns or increase organizational overhead, and prioritize opportunities that have the most potential impact on service experience and outcomes.

There will be different opinions on the scope and granularity of information most suited for blueprinting. Work in the open, be creative about collecting data from different parts of the organization, and facilitate discussion across teams. The process of building the blueprint is as valuable as the end artifact itself, in bringing clarity on how to move forward.