Viewrail Service Blueprinting Initiative

Service Blueprints

PRODUCT

Initiative Lead & Faciliator

ROLE

2025

YEAR

OVERVIEW

Leading Viewrail’s first service blueprint initiative

I led Viewrail’s first service blueprinting initiative to support the company’s inaugural annual IT planning cycle. The goal was to create shared visibility into business services and data flows, enabling more informed decisions.

These service blueprints are now used as a foundational reference for IT planning, cross-functional alignment, and ongoing prioritization at Viewrail. Scope I owned:

  • Initiative planning and management

  • Strategic communication

  • Workshop facilitation

  • Conceptual and visual design

BACKGROUND

From discovery to install, the Viewrail customer journey is facilitated by many teams and complex operations.

Viewrail is an innovative $100M+ stair and railing manufacturer serving customers nationwide.

PROBLEM

“We need visibility into business services, workflows, and automations enabling the customer journey.”

– Viewrail IT Executive

PLANNING

How might we collaborate with department leaders to successfully document this?

Successful would look like:

  1. Accuracy of deliverables

  2. High participation and engagement

  3. Repeatable process

Shaping an Initial Approach

  • Workshop design

  • Schedule coordination

  • Communication

  • Preparation of materials

FACILITATION

Piloting the Initial Approach

  1. Review customer journey and scenario

  2. Blueprinting

  3. Ideation and prioritization

ITERATION

How might increase buy-in and engagement?

  • What did participants value most?

  • Where could the participant experience be improved?

  • How should the initiative be reframed in future communication?

Documentation Over Abstract Ideation

Through running the pilot, I discovered that documenting tacit knowledge was the part of the blueprinting workshops that stakeholders found most valuable. They didn’t gravitate toward pie-in-the-sky ideation exercises.

Optimizing for Participant Time, Energy, and Focus

By removing workshop exercises that didn’t match business maturity, I saw an additional opportunity to reduce the workshop series from three focused sessions to a single focused workshop.

I also introduced optional follow-up review sessions, allowing stakeholders to provide feedback on the final deliverable and enabling me to assess readiness for future ideation exercises.

Communicating Need, Value, and Gratitude to Reframe

Because service blueprints were unfamiliar to participants, I framed the work intentionally. I drew on my understanding of the company’s business maturity, culture, and industry to clearly position the initiative’s value.

Insights from the pilot helped me clarify why the work mattered, how input would be used, and consistently acknowledge participants’ time and expertise across all touch points.

IMPACT

From tacit knowledge to shared understanding

By designing, piloting, and refining Viewrail’s first service blueprinting initiative, I validated a repeatable elicitation and delivery format the organization will use for continued service blueprinting efforts in 2026.

The first two service blueprints created during the pilot provided leadership with the visibility needed for IT prioritization grounded in real data and improved interdepartmental alignment.

TAKEAWAYS

This project was my first experience leading a service blueprinting initiative at an organizational scale. It demonstrated how grounded documentation and facilitation can create shared understanding and support more confident planning and prioritization. My top takeaways are:

  • Tailoring the service design framework to the company’s culture, business maturity, and industry context was critical to success.

  • Designing workshops around participant context, time, and energy improved the quality of both input and output, while increasing overall buy-in.

  • Piloting and refining the approach was essential to establishing a repeatable, validated process the organization can reuse.