How long does a journey take to make?
This week a colleague rushed up asking how long it would take to produce a journey and the answer was … it depends.
But first, what is a journey?

A journey is a model of a person’s experience over time with an organisation. They can describe a service experience of an existing customer, such as a support call or they can describe the sales experience of a new customer. The latter usually conforming to some version or other of the purchasing funnel. For the purposes of this post I am discussing current-state and not future-state journey maps.
Who and what is represented in journeys?
A journey can be the story of a specific persona or it can depict the generalised experience of all customers. Adaptive Path makes this distinction and labels the former a customer journey map, and the later an experience map.
Then there is the “stage” to consider. The front-stage shows the customer experience and the back-stage presents the corresponding experience of the organisation – the teams, systems and processes that combine to deliver the experience. This kind of journey is usually described as a service blueprint.
So … how long does a journey take to make?
To plan resources, people, and effort you need to think about the content and the data that’s informing it. This can come from internal workshops, co-design sessions, or through customer and staff research.
Guidelines for planning
Activity | Inputs | Who you’ll need | Time | Considerations | Cost | Trade-off |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Quick Workshop | Anecdotal knowledge | Subject matter experts, product owners, front line staff as proxies for customers. 1-2 facilitators. | Half-day |
|
$ | Minimal time and cost but no first-hand customer data. |
Workshop | Existing researchVoice of customer data | Subject matter experts, staff, product owners. 1-2 facilitators. | 1-2 weeks |
|
$$ | Minimal time and cost. Depending on quality of research and data journey can be fragmented with no context for wider story or experience. |
Journey co-design workshops | Recounted experience. Example touch points. | Customers who have recently or are currently going through the experience.One facilitator, one note taker. | 2-5 weeks |
|
$$$ | Customer data represented but highly dependent on recall. Detail of real time customer experience e.g. with a specific touchpoint or episode may be lost. |
JTBD switch interviews with customers | Recounted experience. | Customers who have very recently switched to your product or away you’re your product to a competitor. One researcher. Note taker optional. |
3-5 weeks |
|
$$$ | Customer data represented but dependent on recall. Skilled interviewer should be able to elicit detail of real time customer experience of a specific touchpoint or episode. |
Contextual interviews and/or longitudinal diary studies with customers | Recounted or directly observed experience.Qualitative insights.Can dig deep into quite low level detail and describe context of use of example touch points. | Customers who have recently or are currently going through the experience. A representative sample for each customer segment. A team of researchers. 2-4 depending on the number of customers. |
8-12 weeks |
|
$$$$$ | Requires large investment and results are not actionable for some time but end result is credible research report usable by both executive and operational teams. |
Conclusion
As with anything, there are trade offs involved. A well researched and high detailed journey will certainly stand the test of time, be useful to multiple audiences, and be a persuasive research piece to support change. It all depends on your project needs and constraints. The 80/20 rule may also apply—making smaller investments with Jobs-to-be-Done research or co-design workshops may yield most of the major insights you need to uncover for significantly less cost and time.
Update:
I have made a some updates since first publishing this post. Thanks to Krispian Emert for your valuable feeback.
Comments
Great overview to start understanding different sizes of journey mapping.