Process Mapping

Process Mapping

Key items to note when process mapping:

http://www.bpmenterprise.com/content/c060710a.asp

- Follow Best practices and get the right people (SME) for each job.

- Get the bigger picture of the entire system instead of just discrete or departmental views. Understanding interactions. But don’t (lose) losing sight of the forest for the trees.

- Understanding the current processes in depth.

- Prioritize key things that need to be done, elements in critical path, customer delivery preference

- Get key stakeholders involved (just like a project: sponsors, change agents, actual people involved daily/doing the work etc).

The actual people involved must validate the maps and agree to the basic premise of change

Learn from their learnings.

- Define your scope, objectives and outcome of this exercise and have it approved from the stakeholders

(define performance metrics, success criteria)

- Get feedback and improve. It is many a times an iterative delivery and may not be a big bang. It is imperative to give everybody a clear picture of the entire change though they might just be involved in a smaller portion. More is usually better.

- Do proper planning regarding volumes (current and future), potential bottlenecks, remediation plans/contingency etc (especially during the transition)

- Prepare and educate everybody involved of all steps involved.

http://www.bpmenterprise.com/content/c060821a.asp

- Better looking process maps (actual diagram)

- Using proper arrows, boxes, Connectors, page layout.

- Reduce number of bends.

- Breaking it down into readable parts rather than a spaghetti of lines/connectors

- Using top down and drill-down approach. i.e. Level 1 (high-level building blocks) Level 2 (more details), Level 3 (even more details).

- Also use good numbering convention for defining Levels and processes/sub processes in each level.

It is extremely important for the people involved to clearly understand and agree to what is laid out in the map.

Since picture is worth a thousand words. Let not make it worse.

- A defined process for one place may or may not have reusability for another site.

- New defined Process has to be repeatable and sustainable

- While it is easy to pick the low lying fruits it is extremely important to scrutinize entire process.

That said, do not get stuck in analysis paralysis during definition. Get a consensus and keep moving. Iterative success is better than nothing.

- use as foundation for real and lasting organizational improvement

- understand real communication and data flow within org

- focus on core processes which serve customers

- to capture corporate knowledge base previuosly help in people’s heads

- educational tool to pass corporate knowledge to next generation.

- Typically :

- Define and validate starting point

- Benchmark current process

- Define metrics and success criteria

- Optimize for future scalability

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Issues during process mapping

http://www.bpminstitute.org/articles/article/article/barriers-to-process-redesign.html

- Employee and culture resistance to change.

It must be made clear to the employees the objective of the mapping process. Not necessarily job reduction, but genuinely helping to optimize things and enable them to perform better and be more productive.

- Difficulty thinking out of the box & skepticism,