Enterprise Journey Mapping Part 2: Envisioning the Future Journey

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at creating a current-state journey map for an enterprise experience. In this part, we’ll look at creating a future-state map.

This article assumes that you’ve first created a current-state map, though that artifact isn’t strictly necessary for future-state mapping. You do want to make sure there is, as a baseline, a clear understanding of the current experience: how work is getting done, what is working well, and what sort of difficulties exist. A thoughtfully constructed current-state journey map is ideal in communicating that information, but you could use other artifacts instead (such as a research findings report).

Creating a future-state journey map is an envisioning exercise. Whereas the current-state map was created as an outcome of observational research, the future-state map is a creative endeavor typically done in a workshop setting.

In the Part 1 discussion of what to include on a current-state map, I noted that I typically exclude an “Opportunities” section on that map. Instead, we’re going to identify opportunities in the future-state workshop where we can draw from a variety of perspectives. To this end, we’ll have workshop participants generate a set of “How Might We” (HMW) questions. More on HMWs in a moment.

Another essential factor with future-state journey mapping is that it is driven by business strategy. Although the current-state map is a significant input, you’ll also want a clear understanding of industry trends, emerging technologies, strategic imperatives for the business, and any immovable constraints such as regulation.

Keep in mind that creating a future-state journey map is about envisioning relevant and realistic possibilities, not making final product decisions. The map can serve, however, as a substantial input to the product planning process.

To create a future-state journey map, we’ll look at four steps:

1. Defining the Target Time Horizon
2. Planning the Workshop
3. Conducting the Workshop
4. Creating the Final Future-State Map

Defining the Target Time Horizon

Depending on your goals, you may want to map a nearer-term future journey (1 to 2 years out) or a longer-term vision (3 to 5 years out). The key is that you should define up-front, with appropriate product stakeholders, the time horizon you want to address.

Planning the Workshop

The workshop has three main activities:

• Reviewing the inputs, capturing a set of HMW questions along the way
• Using the collection of HMW questions to identify the most promising opportunities
• Realizing the promising opportunities as a future-state journey

Who Should be in the Workshop?

As a baseline, the workshop should include:

• The product owner/manager
• Representatives from the UX team, customer service or support, and engineering

If the system is commercially-available, you should also include representatives from marketing and sales.

If it’s an internal system, you should include people who oversee the associated business processes as they can bring critical subject matter expertise to the table. For example, if you are envisioning the future for an internally-developed call center application, you would want to include the call center manager or supervisor. The only caveat here is that people involved in the current process may have an emotional investment in it and be anxious about change. This situation is not always the case, but the workshop will be more fruitful if you can engage individuals that are likely to embrace, rather than recoil from, change.

In my experience, six to eight people is the sweet spot for the number of workshop participants. However, often more are involved to ensure there is “fair representation.” The key to managing larger groups is to break them into teams for activities.

Strive, if at all possible, to have everyone together, in-person, in the same room. Though online collaboration tools make it technically possible to have remote participants, this set up does not have the same impact or outcome as having everyone together in a room. It’s essential, therefore, to plan adequately ahead for the workshop so that people can clear their schedules and make any necessary travel arrangements.

You’ll want to make sure all workshop participants come into the session well-prepared. They should be clear on the time commitment, receive the workshop agenda well ahead of time, and have time to review any necessary background materials.

Workshop Timing

I find it’s most effective to keep the workshop to a single day. It’s a more manageable time commitment for people to make, so you are more likely to get the needed representation. There can always be follow-on activities or meetings post-workshop as necessary. In general, the first half of the day focuses on identifying opportunities with the second half devoted to creating the future journey.

Materials for the Workshop

You’ll need the following materials for the workshop:

• Print out of the current-state map. Note: likely, this is very large and will need to be sent out for printing. Printing the map might be pricy, but it’s well worth the investment.
• Any other relevant artifacts coming out of the research done to generate the current-state map. These artifacts might include a findings report, role descriptions, or frameworks (such as Jobs To Be Done) used to depict the current state.
• Painter’s tape for posting the current-state map (and possibly other artifacts) on the wall.
• A large, visual timer — either app-based or a dedicated device. The timer is optional but can help keep the timing on-target.
• Two colors of 4x6 unlined super-sticky post-its. Each participant gets one package of each color. They will use these to write their HMW questions: one color for HMWs coming from a review of the current state; the other color for HMWs coming from the review of the overall business context.
• A Sharpie-style marker for each participant (for writing on the post-its)
• Voting dots in two colors. One color for voting on the most obvious “low hanging fruit” opportunities; the other color for voting on opportunities that would have the most significant impact. Each participant gets three dots in each color (six dots in total).
• A roll of craft paper and standard 3x3 post-its for creating a draft future-state map

Workshop Agenda and Activities

A workshop, at its core, is a coming together of people — a social event if you will — so you want it to be engaging (dare I say fun?) and productive. To keep activities on-target, create a timed agenda. A rough sample for a one-day workshop is below:

• (15 minutes) Introductions and Ice-Breaker
• (1.5 hour) Review of the Current State
• (10 minutes) Break
• (1 hour) Review of the Overall Business Context
• (10 minutes) Break
• (30 minutes) Organizing HMW Questions into Themes
• (1 hour) Lunch
• (10 minutes) HMW Voting
• (1 hour) Future-State Mapping
• (10 minutes) Break
• (1 hour) Future-State Mapping, continued
• (30–60 minutes, depending on the number of mapping teams) Presentation of Team Maps
• (15 minutes) Final Wrap-Up & Next Steps

About How Might We (HMW) Note Taking

A central activity in the workshop is the HMW note-taking. Rather than have workshop participants take notes in notebooks, they create HMWs on the large (4x6) post-its — one note per post-it. The HMW method was developed in the ’70s by Proctor & Gamble and was more recently popularized by both IDEO and the book Sprint by Jake Knapp. HMW questions have the advantage of reframing problems as opportunities, moving participants’ thinking towards ideation:

Problem: Patients often forget to schedule follow-up appointments.

HMW Question: How might we ensure that patients make their follow-up appointments?

For HMW note-taking, make sure each workshop participant is equipped with the large post-its and a marker. When people hear something that in their mind represents an opportunity, they write it down on the posit-it as an HMW question.

Additional example HMW questions could include:

• HMW allow patients to schedule appointments on their own (without a Scheduler)?
• HMW automatically check patients into their appointment?
• HMW eliminate manual entry of appointment details in the EMR system?

HMW note-taking may be unfamiliar to workshop participants, so as the facilitator I prepare a short introduction and some relevant examples ahead of time to get the ball rolling. I also keep on eye on the writing activity — if people seem stymied, I stop and make sure they are feeling comfortable and clear with the process.

Kicking Off the Workshop

Before beginning the workshop activities, include a short ice-breaker as part of the introductions to warm up the group. I like to ask people to share their favorite activity related to the current season: for example, if it’s summer, ask participants to share their favorite summer activity. It gives people a chance to share a bit of their life outside of work and provides fuel for conversation at breaks and during lunch.

Reviewing the Current State

Begin the workshop proper with a review of the current state. This review includes the current-state map, plus any other relevant research-related artifacts. Make sure people are ready to take their HMW notes using the first color of 4x6 post-its.

Ideally, participants have reviewed the current-state map ahead of time, but I’ve learned not to rely on this. Have the map posted in the workshop room, but plan to do a high-level review of the roles and general flow so that everyone is starting from a common understanding of the current experience. Often, the workshop includes individuals who were involved in reviewing the current-state map for factual accuracy. Consider engaging them to review sections of the map that fall into their area of expertise.

From there, cover the elements of the map that represent research findings, including pain points and unexpected touchpoints (such as relying on paper or spreadsheets). In a workshop setting, it’s most effective to pull these findings out of the current-state map and into a presentation. Be sure to pace the presentation such that people have time to take their HMW notes. I pause after each slide and make sure most everyone has completed notes before moving to the next slide.

Reviewing the Overall Business Context

The next HMW activity is reviewing the overall business context, including:

• Industry trends (including, for commercial systems, the competitive landscape)
• Emerging technologies such as machine learning, augmented reality, and internet of things (IoT)
• Strategic imperatives for the business, including performance targets
• Any immovable constraints, such a regulation

Make sure people are ready to take their HMW notes using the second color of 4x6 post-its.

What specifically gets covered here depends on the system and the particular business situation surrounding it. For example, on one project, there was urgency around competitors winning business with solutions that weren’t as fully-featured but offered a superior UX. As a result, we spent more time reviewing the competitive landscape, including competitors’ offerings. On another project, which involved monitoring and repairing field equipment, the industry was making a push towards emerging technologies, so we spent more time reviewing that area (including drones, remote sensing, and use of automated messaging to replace radio communication).

Plan ahead of time who will cover these topics. It could be that individuals attending the workshop have the necessary knowledge or you may need to bring in “special guests.” These individuals can join remotely as necessary. For example, in a recent workshop, we included representatives from each global region in the discussion of industry trends, to make sure we had an appropriately broad perspective.

Once again, make sure the pacing of the presentation is such that people have time to write their HMW notes.

Grouping the Opportunities into Themes

At this point, participants will have their set of HMW questions. Next, have the group post their HMW questions on the wall — all together, without regard to color and in no specific order. The goal here is just to get the entire set of questions visible.

With all the questions posted, it’s time for the grouping activity. Have participants group related HMW questions together (again, without regard to the post-it color). For example, you may have a set of HMW questions around capturing patients’ vital signs — these could be grouped as a theme. Initially, keep the groupings unlabeled to see how they might more freely emerge.

Once groupings are more strongly evident, go ahead and label the groups using the smaller 3x3 post-its. What you’re going for here is a rough organization of the ideas — not perfection. It’s OK to have a catch-all “Misc” group for ideas that seemingly don’t fit into the emerging groups. Also, particularly if you are working with a larger group, there may be duplicate instances of the same idea…you can stack those HMWs on top of each other. Additionally, there may be ideas that are very closely related: you can stick these together (so each is still at least partially visible).

You want to time-box the grouping exercise to around 30 minutes. This timing helps keep the energy high around the activity and prevents analysis paralysis.

Once this activity is complete — and before the next activity (dot-voting) — take one or more photos of the entire set of HMW statements as they organized into themes. This capture ensures you have the notes for later reference as necessary.

Identifying the Most Promising Opportunities

Next up is dot-voting to help prioritize the identified opportunities.

Dot-voting is popular, but it’s important to understand its limitations (articulated well in this article). We are using dot-voting here not to make final product decisions, but to help highlight which opportunities to explore further in a future-state journey map.

Organizing the HMWs into themes was done without regard to the color of the post-it used. However, in evaluating the entire corpus of HMWs, it can be helpful to understand which came from the review of the current state (the first color of post-it) and which from review of the overall business context (the second color of post-it).

Even with each color, you’re going to have a mixed bag of HMW opportunities. Some might be small, easy fixes to address right away, while others might require longer timeframes. While we’re not doing a formal Level-of-Effort (LOE) analysis, it’s helpful to have a separate set of voting dots for easy fixes. Otherwise, people can get snagged up about overlooking these opportunities. For example, there might be a HMW “make it easier for Schedulers to select the right physician.” This issue could be fixed by merely changing the type of control used in the interface — something that might be accomplished in the next few weeks.

Give each participant three “low hanging fruit” votes.

Participants should get a different colored set of three dots to vote on opportunities that would have the most significant impact based on:

• The business goals expressed
• What is generally realistic for the time horizon of the future-state map

Again we’re not doing LOE analysis — or a formal assessment of feasibility — but you don’t want to have people expending votes on opportunities that are clearly outside of your target timeframe.

Dot-voting should be done relatively quickly for both vote types: 10–15 minutes should do the trick.

Mapping the Desired Future State

At this point, you should have three main inputs for your future-state map:

• The current-state map
• The entire set of HMW questions, grouped into themes
• Results of the dot-voting on the HMW questions

Keep in mind these are inputs; additional ideas are likely to emerge as you begin mapping the future journey.

Also, the goal is to get a running start on the future-state journey map in the workshop setting — to leverage the group’s experience and expertise — not come out with a 100% complete and final mapping of the future experience. Work on the future-state journey map will likely continue post-workshop.

The scope of your future-state map may be the same as the current-state map, but you could also narrow the focus if a subset of the experience clearly represents the greatest opportunity or challenge. For example, you may feel you can play “catch up” in providing patients with the ability to schedule their ownappointments, modeling your experience off what your competitors are already doing. You will ultimately depict the scheduling function in the future-journey map, but it might not be necessary to engage workshop participants in ideation for it. Conversely, ensuring that patients schedule their follow-up appointments — that’s a harder problem to solve — and therefore, could be essential to explore in the workshop.

The mapping activity works best if you divide the larger workshop group into three to four person mapping teams. You have two basic options on how to deploy the teams: “divide and conquer” or parallel design. In divide and conquer, each team works on a different part of the journey. If you feel all or part of the journey warrants more in-depth exploration, you can use teams to work on the same journey in parallel.

The map itself should focus on describing what the experience would be like in the future:

• The roles involved
• Steps in the process
• The touchpoint(s) associated with each step (tools, devices, information)

Depending upon people’s experience with journey mapping, you may want to briefly review the current-state map as a model.

Equip each team with a generous length of craft paper, the 3x3 post-its, and markers. The advantage of working initially with these analog tools is that it invites everyone on the team to participate. The post-its provide the flexibility to add, move, and change elements on the map.

As the facilitator, I usually circulate the room as people begin journey mapping to see how efforts are progressing and to answer any questions. How the mapping process transpires is dependent upon the individuals involved, the dynamic within the teams, and the specific type of journey they are depicting.

The sample agenda allocates two hours for the mapping activity — two one-hour sessions with a 10-minute break. If teams seem to be finishing their work early, by all means, wrap it up.

Presentation of Team Maps

Assuming you’ve divided the group into mapping teams, the last activity is having each team present their map to the larger group. Assign a time limit for each presentation (15–20 minutes, depending on the number of teams and the time available). Each team designates a presenter who presents the their mapping work, after which the team can field comments and questions.

If you had the mapping teams working in parallel during the workshop (each team working on the same part of the journey), you’ll need to reconcile and consolidate the different versions. Discussion around these maps should focus on the most promising approaches so that they are incorporated into the final map.

Creating the Final Future-State Map

At the end of the workshop day, you should have an overall vision of what the future journey could look like, a more extensive set of opportunities identified through the HMW note-taking and theming, and a set of specific ideas to move your product into the future.

Even if you feel like you’ve created the final journey in the workshop, you’ll still want to get it into digital form. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve got all the necessary elements on the map to tell the future story adequately. In addition to depicting the future process, the roles involved in that process, and touchpoints, you might also include:

• Context (environment, location)
• Proposed changes (how the future differs from the current)
• Scenario narrative that describes the intended experience in more detail
• Targeted performance metrics or quotas
• Additional notes to capture any miscellaneous considerations for the future experience

You’ll also want to circle back with workshop participants, ideally in one or more follow-up meetings, to review and receive feedback on the “draft final” map.

Moving Forward with the Future Journey

The future-state map provides a concise representation of the future vision, gathering the team around a common direction. It can be a significant input into artifacts such as the product roadmap, storyboards, and user stories. Consider printing out and posting the map in a public area, such as a hallway or other shared space. The future-state map keeps the vision alive and can help product team members move forward with the bigger picture in mind.

Update:

Want to learn more about capturing flows? My book Object Modeling & Flow Diagramming for Designers is now available!