My Daily Dispatch page is inspired by two people who have independently written books called ‘Show Your Work’ - Austin Kleon and Jane Bozarth. Kleon suggests that people share something small every day. He calls this a daily dispatch: “Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.” I’ve chosen to do this here on my website. It’s a way of collecting, organising and expanding on the flow of my work and learning. It’s a place to share ideas and stuff I care about. It’s a way to give others more insight to my work and interact with it and me.
Earlier this week someone shared a ‘service blueprint’ with me. It was a one page summary of key information regarding a methodology for a repeated service. I’ve now used it twice with minor adaptations on methodologies that I’m currently designing. It’s a very easy way to summarise key information about a methodology on a single page. I’ve found it especially useful to (1) communicate expectations with multiple parties who need to undertake tasks (2) identify gaps in a methodology or toolkit.
A basic generic template is shown below and can be downloaded at this link. If you do download it please post a comment below. It would be useful to know what you are using it for and any adaptations you make to it.
Here is a quick guide to content of the service blueprint by row:
Stage – Break methodology into a series of stages and give each one a title
Maximum Duration – Estimate maximum duration for each stage. You could also give a maximum / minimum range, or an estimated duration for projects of different scales or complexity.
Physical Evidence – List key physical artefacts that will be produced during a stage. These provide evidence of completion of key tasks in each stage.
Customer Actions – Most projects have an end customer, be they internal or external. Identify key actions / tasks for customer in each stage.
Consultation Actions / Group X Actions – Add a row for each key party that has to complete actions / tasks for any stage. This is similar to a ‘swim lane’ in a process map. Identify key actions / tasks for each party in each stage.
Tools & Templates – List key tools or templates that should / could be used in each stage.
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