Blueprint and Business Plan

The end result of a service design project is presented in the form of a combined Business Plan and a Blueprint (BP2) at each of four distinct stages of a project’s life.

a) Scoping document

A detailed ‘drawing on the back of a large napkin’ which the initial scoping document maps the issues in context, suggests an approach, identifies the key tasks and people required, postulates outcomes in general terms and starts to scope the benefits.

A multi-disciplinary team will often start a service design project by working with a mixed group of specialists with particular skills, knowledge and insight from around the world and in the UK to produce a scoping paper. After a brief induction and some practice together, the team will use the tool kits described. The team will become the de facto service designers of the model. Blueprints and business plans will be built from the market back to the internal budget and variations will be enabled through iterative processes involving key stakeholders.

b) Outline BP2

This second step in the process of blueprinting and planning follows initial research into needs of people and objectives of organisation and early ideas generation to define the task more clearly, check understanding and ensure that nothing has been omitted before major ideas generation starts. Once again the blueprint and business plan set out commercial rationale and scope benefits in more detail.

c) Options BP2

After a first round of ideas generation, experience prototyping and global search for tried and tested components, a set of options with associated implications, costs and benefits from which selections may be made in order to move forward.

d) Specification BP2

The final blueprint and business plan sets out the way forward specifying implementation steps precisely in terms of:

• Markets - refined from cross-reference of strategy with market and customer data
• Products and services - to meet the needs of end users and intermediaries
• Processes - management, organisation, ICT, operational
• People - right people, structures, culture, ambition, ideology, strategy
• Place - service delivery channels, locations, touch points, ownership, constitution
• Promotion - culture, stakeholder management, communication and training
• Implementation - next steps mapped out in detail including budgets and milestones