JPMorgan Journey Mapping
Understand and map out a complex internal process
background & my role
JPMorgan is one of the largest financial institutions in the world and as such, requires vigorous adherence to standards and security practices for all software and hardware in the firm. I was brought in to map out the process that evaluates all internally created software (over 4000 applications) and hardware (over 500,000 assets) against controls ensuring the required standards are met.
I worked as an individual service designer on understanding and mapping out the end-to-end process that had not yet been mapped or indeed, fully understood by the stakeholders.
In addition, I led 2 UX designers performing an evaluation of the main tool used in this process.
My process
1. stakeholder workshop In order to understand the stakeholder expectation of the blueprint and find the best approach to gathering all the information, I facilitated a workshop with the 4 project sponsors. During this we agreed on timelines, deliverables, and best way of approaching the 7 teams that are involved in the process. As I wanted to create as unbiased view of the process as possible, we agreed on performing two sets of interviews - first with the leadership of each team and second with the practitioners. This approach would allow me to keep the identity of the practitioners who participated secret, thus providing them with psychological comfort and safety.
2. leadership interviews & initial blueprint Over the course of a week, I performed interviews with the leads in each team, gaining deep understanding into the process, the actors involved, and noting the numerous pain points.
3. practitioner interviews I performed 18 interviews with practitioners from all the teams (two from each team). The number of interviews is higher than initially expected as I uncovered important differences in the sub-teams through the leadership interviews. This round of research focused specifically around the day-to-day tasks, goals, and expectations for each of the practitioners. I found out a huge number of pain points and insights into inefficient processes and inadequate software.
All the interviews were performed online.
4. journey map 
Following a thorough analysis of the research, I created a detailed journey map, showing the complex process of software and hardware asset assessment. The map includes all actors both from the teams interviewed as well as external teams and customers (other employees using the services of this team) as well as all points of handover and systems used. It highlights over 40 pain points and over 35 insights for potential improvements.
5. validation This research and resulting artefacts are going to be used to improve the services and processes both internally to the teams and in their interactions with other teams, I facilitated four validation workshops, accounting for timezones from APAC to Pacific time, and ensuring that the identity of the practitioners is protected. During the workshop I focused on ensuring everyone interviewed felt comfortable with the resulting map and that they had a chance to add any further details or clarification they deemed needed.
6. presentation Journey maps in general are rather overwhelming and difficult to follow, especially if presented on screen, as they contain dense and detailed information. In order to ease that and create a resource that can be used by anyone, I divided up the map into easily consumable slides, containing all the context required to understand each step. I presented this final artefact to senior stakeholder. This piece of work has triggered large structural changes within JPM and was deemed a significant success.
7. heuristic evaluation In parallel to the journey mapping, the Product Owner of the main tool that is used to perform the assessment wanted tangible, best practice UX / UI improvements for her team to work on. Unfortunately, my suggestion to perform usability testing could not fit into the desired schedule, thus I led two UX designers in performing a heuristic evaluation of the application. Through this exercise we created a prioritised list of improvements for the development team to tackle, as well as a prioritised list of items that would require further design work in order to be improved.