How To Create A Process Map

hi Alan message e here and recently we've had occasion to go out and assist several people with mapping some current state workflows and this can not be real natural for a lot of people so I wanted to go through real quick some some techniques a process you can use to do process mapping that should really help so we're just going to go through several steps here and when we're done with it if you have questions after you've reviewed the video and you've tried to process map you have questions and please by all means give one of us in operational excellence a call we'll come out and help you so let's go ahead and get started here what we're going to do first before we get to all the the symbols and all the lines and all that we're just going to create a list of the tasks that we have so first and foremost what we want to do is identify the process name and what I like to do right off this right off the bat is identify the first step and as near as you can what the last step is on just a blank blank piece of paper I don't even like to use line so whatever your first step is you know write it out what is that first step in your process so you've named the process you write the first step as near as you can write the last step and if you need to rework this a little bit later you can do that so the next thing you're going to want to do is consider the level of detail and generally speaking what we're dealing with at this point in time is the what we're not getting terribly detailed into how you would go about performing steps we're more concerned about the what so you might want to look at your current or at your sorry future State epic workflows and just to get an idea of the level of detail that those are written in and that will kind of help guide you as far as how much detail to get into are in this in this current state mapping we're going to go through so the next thing that you want to do is basically act like I am they're looking over your shoulder and you're going to explain to me what this process is and you're just going to start with the first step you're going to write it out and then you're going to write down what the second step is like I said we'll go through an example here in just a minute so you can have that and so on and so forth and just list it out in a bullet format just like you're talking to me just write it down first allows and then you're going to want to add a couple things and you know this is personal preference you can do it however you want either as you're going or when you're all done you can come back and do this um before I get to these other elements to add do I want to just remind you of a couple caveats as you're going down through each step one don't forget about decisions on decision gates that you just you know the process so well you make them on the fly a lot of times those are not readily apparent and you may very well forget that you're making a decision like I said you know it's so well sometimes you forget to write it down but to explain it to somebody else for it to make sense to somebody from the epic team or someone else working on this project then then you need to have those decision gates documented the other thing is a follow-on process when we get into the example you'll see this but when you get down into a decision gate one branch of it say yes here's my decision my diamond we'll talk about shapes in a minute but the the answer may be yes okay continue on in this process if your answer is no you may have a follow on that leads to a totally separate process of a different name on a different piece of paper so we'll get to that so as you're going down through and listing these steps don't forget about decision gates and follow-on processes on so now these other elements the who who's doing each of these steps and this could be a role of a person within your department and we could have multiple roles or depending on how wide the scope is it may lead to another department you may just have a department here and say this department does the third step in our process okay and then the other two elements that we would ask you to consider and to add on the right are the computer system name so if this step involves accessing a computer entering information into computer looking up information in a computer then just write the name of the system over here on the right and then on the very far right sorry I'm running out of space here small whiteboard but what you want to do is and this is optional depends on how much experience you have with process mapping you may not need to do this stuff but for those who are fairly new to process mapping it may help to go through and put the shape that this step is if it's a regular process or sorry a regular task just a regular step it's just a rectangle if it's a decision gate then it's a diamond and a couple things to remember here if it's a decision gate you're going to be asking a question in here okay so you'll have like a question if it's a task it starts with a verb somebody is doing something so typically statements within a rectangle within a process or a task step will begin with a verb you'll have a question in a diamond and then the other two um are of rectangle with rounded corners and I'm not too picky if you want to just go ahead and use a regular rectangle for your first up fine what I would ask you to do though is on the very first step write the word start with a colon so that somebody from the outside can tell where the first step is and on the last one you would put the word in like I said not very picky on those if you want to use just a regular rectangle that's fine on the last step then you just write in N so the person reading the map knows where you stopped so once you've got these four elements the roll the step the system and the shape you've labeled the who then what you want to do is just double check it because once you get to the process mapping it can take a little bit of time and it's easier to change it here you know do this on a white board do a pencil and paper on a clipboard just quick and easy leave you don't leave some spaces in case you think of other things that need to be added you can do that without a lot of rework but double check this actually go walk the process physically walk the process or talk somebody through it to make sure that you haven't omitted something here and then like I said the last step typically when you get towards the end you may be using a follow-on process so be sure to note those as you're going through your follow-on processes so the next step is we will go through an example here and hopefully that'll help okay so I've been doing some work recently with surgery and we have some questions on the transcription process and how that worked and turnaround times and all that so I went and did some mapping so I'm just going to use that for an example it's pretty simple one with only two rolls so it'll be a very simple swimlane diagram so I've just sent myself up a little grid here as you can see transcription process I've got who's got do it my step the system name and the shape so the first thing I'm going to do is just go through and fill out this step so let's start with Cole Cole Cole dictation system next step interwork code and I think I'm going to pause the tape here in just second to speed this along dictate whoops got an extra letter in there okay dictate H and P okay so as you can see I've come back and finished filling these in so we had the first three steps before call dictation system and her work code dictate Agent P I went through and added the rest of the steps download two to three jobs transcribe the H and P here's a question do you have encounter number if no the h TP goes into a hold hold status into holding Q then then we got to find an encounter number match that encounter number to the patient that's a manual process once that matching is done then then it automatically releases to profit care and then we have a follow-on process for the short stay unit chart charting process or looking up the information to complete the chart so as you can see this gets a little bit dicey when you're just listing steps when you get to the decision gates the yes or no they can be a little bit confusing when you're in this format so do your best with it and just remember we'll put the shape out there in a minute here and it'll make much more sense when we actually diagram it out so I'm just going to go through real quick here and put the who we've got the physician doing everything down to here and then we have the transcriptionist doing up doing all the rest of these down to here so pretty straightforward and then the follow on process so that's pretty easy the names of any computer systems involved I believe I'm not positive but I believe this is transcend that the Doc's are actually calling to do their dictation in same on the next two steps and I believe this is tie-ins and that they're downloading frown they transcribe I believe they type that straight into trance and they could go into probably a multitude of different systems trying to find the right encounter number to match it up to so I'm going to just put a question mark because I'm not sure there's probably a bunch there this one we have a step that says auto release the prof care so obviously that's prop there and this is a follow on process so we don't need to worry about that okay so the shape called dictation system this is our first first step so I'm just going to write the word start in there to remember that I'll put that on when we get to the diagram part inner work code these are all going to be rectangles all the way down until we get to our question here so this one's going to be a diamond the rest of these are all going to be regular steps and the rest of these in here all going to be regular rectangles not very rectangular but that's that's supposed to be a rectangle and then the last step is oh it's going to be actually going to be our follow-on process so we'll oh that's a lousy straight line isn't it um okay so our following process will be like a home plate like that and we'll put the name of the follow on process in there so I'm just going to write SSU since we don't have much space so that's it for kind of laying it out getting ready to do the actual process map once you do a couple of these you can do a lot of shorthand and you won't have to be this thorough you'll be able to get to the mapping part a lot faster but this will help get you started doing it in this bullet type format okay I hope you can see that all right this is a template that is available through use if you would like to start with that some folks that really helps it helps with them if nothing else that helps remind you of some of the key identifiers that you need to put on your map like the the title and so on and so forth and it reminds you that we that our Maps will be created in a swimlane format where we have role or responsibility down the left here and then our process steps going from typically starting in the upper left-hand corner and going from left to right in and down as we work through the map so these templates are available I find them to be kind of restrictive because sometimes you have multiple decision gates within one role and these swimlanes just are not wide enough so but that's available for you to use if you would like so what I'm going to go ahead and do is just I'm going to map it out freehand and we'll see how this goes so the first thing I'm going to do again is title the map transcription process the name of my map and I'm going to have the swim lanes here so I'm going to try to save as much space as possible and just put a line there and I'll draw in the lines in a minute here so call dictation system I'm going to write start I'm going to do a lot of abbreviating here just so we can keep it um on screen or on the whiteboard actually since it's such a small whiteboard okay called dictation system the next step is going to be enter work code it's a two digit work code and then I'm just going to connect the boxes to show the flow of the work so it's going from left to right so just connected with a line and an arrow pointing the flow the next step is going to be dictate in this case it's an H&P okay so on and so forth um now what I'm going to do is put position here because they are doing this step there's my slim lane and so the rest of the steps are done by the transcriptionist I'm just going to put trans and that's really medical records probably more detail is better than not enough okay so the first step they're going to do is download two to three jobs and then we're just going to connect this box to that one lens don't have to be perfect just try to make it clear not clear and legible enough so people can see it okay then we're going to transcribe H&P it's going this way and the next step was our question so we're going to ask have encounter number question mark that was our diamond if you remember so we're coming into our diamond and this is we're mapping um comes in handy when we get the decision gates so if we let's let's go with no first so this will be our no branch down here if we don't have the encounter number if you remember we had a step about hold it goes into a holding queue and then the transcriptionist oops sorry I blue got cut ahead of myself a little bit I like to write the words first it makes it a little bit easier more freehand for me so then we have find H and P now put a box around that and my little connector arrow and then we have match match encounter number put a box around that and connect it and then we have our if you remember often the yes branch it was kind of hard to see but we had our auto auto release tooth wroth care and I'm just going to abbreviate there as well so you can see we've got our yes we've got or no when we don't have any counter number it's going to require more steps once we have this match here they manually match it up then it feeds back in and you'll find that that's very very typical in a lot of cases where you have a yes or no type question it will feed back into the same process tower or the same task in the end so then the last one on this one and I've kind of run out of space I'm going to have to here and come down to do my connector to my off sheet or sorry sometimes I call these sawed off page connectors so I slipped there to my follow on process which I'm going to call SSU charting or chart lookup house out okay so that's it that's really it you know sometimes they get a little bit more complicated a couple of tips here when you do get to the decision gates um follow one branch all the way through it can get confusing if you try if you're trying to do a little bit of this one and then oh no this one and and like I said earlier definitely look up your future state epic workflows which by the way for this one I don't think there is um but look that up because it will give you an idea of the level of detail and you don't want to get too bogged down in the details don't feel bad if you get into this and get totally overwhelmed that's very very normal when you're when you're new at mapping so don't feel bad sometimes you just need to step back and break it out maybe you've tried to map to three or even four processes and you've tried to put them all on one page when really you need to break those out and separate them into smaller individual processes so hopefully that explanation in that example helps if you have any questions go ahead and give any of us Black Belts a call and operational excellence we do use Outlook quite religiously so go ahead and send us in an invite and just find an open time on our calendars and if you can't find one then give us a call and we'll help out

Channel: Alan Messegee

Views: 130,669

Rating: 4.8372879 out of 5

Keywords: process mapping, how to map a process, how to create a process map, workflow, Business Process Mapping, flowchart, swimlane diagram

Id: xLWLcVrI_WE

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2011