Blueprint on a page

Communicating large-scale, complex and cross-Council projects in a simple and easy-to-understand way is, as we all know, challenging.

That is why we have “borrowed” a concept that we particularly liked that is being used by the New Zealand government (opens a PDF). It’s called “Blueprint on a Page” and uses a mixture of graphics and words to communicate what the mission, vision, activity and, most importantly, the difference it will make to all the customers and stakeholders.

This focus on outcomes along with the timescales hopefully makes it easy for anyone, no matter what their knowledge of the subject, to quickly grasp what it is all about.

Also, the process of getting it down on a page challenges the project owner’s own understanding of what will be delivered and by when, which is often not a bad thing in itself.

Alongside the Blueprint we’re working on our Site Ethos which will give more clarity and talk about the why of our content, design and technology for Nottinghamshire.gov.uk. The Ethos is another idea inspired by the work of others – in this case Kevin Jump who explains the value of creating an Ethos on his blog here. We’ll post our version here soon.

Anyway, the idea is that the Blueprint does the talking – so it is over to you, let us know what you think (leave a comment or send us your thoughts using this form). If it is a concept that works, we will try and roll it out for other projects in the near future.

You can open or download a copy from the link at the bottom or click on the image to see a bigger version.

Open and download a PDF of our Blueprint on a Page.

Posted by Martin Done, Service Director Communications and Marketing.