How Project Backlogs Drive Day-to-Day Work

Here's the big problem with journey maps...

It's often like you've composed a masterpiece, but no one is there to actually play it.

This is what I feel when I see a carefully crafted map (our version of "music on paper"), which ultimately fails to make an impact.

Sure, we do the research, map the insights, and identify opportunities, but on Monday morning, everyone just goes back to their old routines, checking off to-do items in Jira, ClickUp, or Asana.

The map becomes an impressive visual, but it's disconnected from the way work is done.

This is the implementation gap, and it's where most journey management efforts fail.

So in episode 7 of the Journey Management Playbook series, Tingting Lin and I address this exact problem head-on.

This isn't a guide about what to map rather, it's about how to plug your insights into the operational reality of your organization.

We're moving beyond the theory and into the practical, day-to-day workflow.

I even share my own project management setup, share how things get done in my business and we discuss how to bridge the gap between my project list and the customer journey.

In this episode, you'll hear:

* Why creating a "parallel workflow" for journey management is a recipe for failure.

* How to "plug into" your organization's existing ceremonies.

* A practical way to reverse-engineer your team's current project backlog and to connect it back to the journey.

* The right way to use prioritization matrixes to spark stakeholder conversations and grow alignment.

So if you want to make your journeys the driving force behind your daily decisions, not just another document lost on a hard drive or fading away on the wall, make sure you don't miss this one.

--- [1. LINKS ] ---

• Playbook Slides - https://go.servicedesignshow.com/-sofm
• Sign up for TheyDo - https://go.servicedesignshow.com/scjwb

--- [ 2. GUIDE ] ---

00:00 Welcome to TheyDo EP 07

02:00 Implementation gap

03:00 Defining the Operational Workflow

06:00 The Practical Challenge

09:00 Connecting the Triple Diamond to the Music Metaphor

12:45 Understanding the big picture

15:30 Connecting the churn-reduction journey map

16:30 Journey Management to Project Management

19:30 Modeling initiatives in TheyDo to show a successful integration approach

21:30 How to Model Initiatives in TheyDo for Journey Linkage

24:00 Linking Initiatives to Opportunities/Journeys

25:30 Scoring Initiatives by Impact and Effort

28:00 Connecting Discovery (TheyDo) to Delivery (ClickUp/JIRA)

30:15 Context in the Journey Tool

32:00 Bi-directional Synchronization

34:00 How to set up the connectio

35:45 Understanding the Organizational Workflow

37:30 Handoffs between the Triple Diamond Workflow

39:00 How to Implement the Workflow

41:00 The needed Cultural shift

42:00 Impact driven language

44:30 How to handle non-journey work

47:00 The Workflow is not a Designer's Job Alone

49:00 Recap: The 4 steps

50:30 Journey of the Journey Manager

54:30 Journey Framework for Strategic Alignment

56:30 Ensuring Business Value

58:00 Scaling and Governance

1:02:30 Coming Up Next

--- [ 3. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

• Youtube ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-07-youtube
• Spotify ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-07-spotify
• Apple ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-07-apple
• Snipd ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-07-snipd