A bit of context 

This visualization of the Service Design Process is one that comes from the  British Columbia Government Public Service department and its Service Design Playbook. 

What I like about it 

The first thing that I find interesting in this approach to Service Design is to start with an "Alignement" phase. This makes clear that before we can start a Service Design project we need to have the same expectations between the people working on the project, the people impacted by the project and the people who decide. Indeed, many times, we can jump right into the research, or what is called "Discovery" here without having a good foundation. This is especially smart in big and complex organization like the government.

Another thing I really appreciate is the notion of overlap between phases. It's sometimes hard to have a very clear distinction between the big phases of a Service Design project. And the creators of this process recognize that. To me this is again really smart for big organizations as it allows to be a bit more flexible. When you have a "too" clear delimitation between the phases the danger is that you might end up being blocked between them. Management might want to give a decision or feedback between the phase and you might be blocked for weeks and months before being able to continue. Here, the process shows that as you arrive slowly to the end of one phase you can already prepare some steps for the next one even before having a final go. 

Finally the deep level of documentation is something that I find especially powerful in this Service Design process. There is a 120+ pages manual that explains all the steps of this process in much details. You don't get just a lovely visualization of the process, but tones of explanations, tips and examples to help you all along during your project journey.

Go deeper 

If you want go deeper you can download the PDF version of the playbook here.