Journey Maps for Project Stakeholders

Team Heller
October 31, 2018

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I attended an ACMP Texas event in September and one session particularly inspired me. Lanette Ferguson of TEKsystems presented on the idea of using Journey Maps as a change management tool in technology implementations and I thought it was so awesome, I created a version that could be used for nonprofit tech projects.

Journey Maps are used to visualize the experience a constituent has when engaging with an organization. I was familiar with them, but I hadn’t previously thought about their use in the context of internal project participants. When building journey maps for marketing purposes, the goal is to visualize the path a constituent might take from the time they first become aware of an organization to the point of engaging for services or to provide support in some way. The exercise of building journey maps allows marketers to deepen their thinking about the constituent perspective at different levels of familiarity and tailor communications accordingly.

That exercise can be hugely helpful for understanding how different stakeholders affected by a CRM implementation might experience the process. Beyond just building a sense of empathy, it allows a project team to better anticipate what stakeholders may need at different points in the process and create an action plan for meeting those needs. That can have huge implications for keeping people engaged and moving toward user adoption and I’m all for anything that can help with that.

In her presentation, Ferguson shared a sample journey map that she developed at the request of one of her clients. It was fantastic, but possibly a bit too detailed for the projects I’m usually involved in. I created this example below as something that I think hits the important parts and matches the phases of projects as we do them at Heller.

This example doesn’t have the look and feel of an actual map the way some journey mapping visualizers do, but it does still capture the different aspects of a what a person’s experience might be as they move through an implementation. There’s a snapshot here and a link to the download the full PDF below.

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Thinking through the experience of a Major Gift Officer at each stage of the project was a useful exercise in and of itself. It definitely helped me pause and think about the experience the person is having instead of focusing more on the final outcome we’re all aiming for by getting a new system. I could see how certain points in the project introduce risk for losing a person’s engagement and support. But beyond that, the real power in this exercise is that I can take this information and ensure that we are tailoring our change management strategies and plans to address individuals’ pain points and struggles along the way.

I haven’t had a chance to use it one of my projects yet but can’t wait to do so. Hope some of you out there find it useful for your own work as well!