Hi, my name is Søren Pommer. I am the founder of Gluu and today we are
going to talk about simple process mapping. Process mapping is widely used around the
business world. But, also it becomes highly complex so that
people just end up rolling their eyes and not using it. It's used primarily for I.T. projects and
that's really a pity because it has a big potential to explain in a visual way how we
work. This is where we have to get back to what
process mapping really is. Process mapping is a common way of showing
how we work and how work flows. For this, we only need four elements, we don't
need the fifty-five elements that are some techniques use, we just need four, and these four we're going to go through today. We start with roles because roles are what
matters to people. They show who is responsible for what and
that's what people really care about. That's also where things typically go wrong,
not because individuals make mistakes but because handoffs between roles are not done
correctly. So a role is like a hat or a t-shirt you can
wear it's not your job title but it's a job function that you can fulfil. So now we are ready to start, to prepare I've
drawn up a process canvas. I have a swim lane and I have a process name
and I have a process outcome. The process, in this case, is handling customer
complaints. I have chosen to call it handle a complaint,
because it is important to call it something activatable, something which people can relate
to. Much better. Also, we have an outcome, in this case, a
happy customer. This sets the objective of the process. It's very important to scope the process so
that we don't have a process that becomes too long. Then we have swim lanes, a swim lane shows
what each role is responsible for. Then we
can connect our people to our roles, then we can know what each person is responsible
for. So this is essentially the basis that we start
with, this is the first building block, the swim lane. So, now we need to talk about what starts
the process. That's what we call an event. In this case, the event is customer complaints. The event is drawn like a circle and it has
some kind of a name that explains it. So, in this case, it's customer complains. I place this with the customer because he's
the one who starts the process. But, events are typically external events. Something that impacts the process and starts
it or finishes it. So, it's not exactly part of the process but
it's more showing where the process comes from. Of course, this could be another process as
well but an event is often used to start and finish. Now we are going to talk about the third shape. We talked about the event to start up our
process that has happened, the customer has complained. Now the customer service department needs
to do something about it. That's where the activity shape comes in. An activity is not even a task, it's bigger
than a task. It's a job to do, it may contain multiple
tasks, it may last anywhere between a few minutes to several hours. But it is the work of one role. So, in this case, we have the service rep
needs to accept the complaint, he needs to literally ask to understand what's going on. Possibly pass it on to others. If it's for him he needs to handle it, split
this into two different activities so that they can be allocated to different roles if
need be. But these are the activities. So now we have talked about swim lanes or
the roles, that show the people that are involved we have talked about the events that start
the process and we talked about the activities which contain the work and now we're going
to talk a little bit about the decisions which happen during the process. These are important to get into the canvas
because they showed when to proceed with one activity rather than the other activity. In this case, it may be that the customer
service representative was not able to handle the complaint the first time. So, he needs to make a decision is it resolved? Yes, then he can pass it on to the customer. And the customer has to accept and acknowledge
it. Or he has to escalate it to the third level
and to a supervisor. So, this is what the decision does it really
shows how the process splits and the criteria for splitting. So the next step you need to take from here
is you need to make your work instructions. Now you have your overview of who does what
and how is something you have to associate with each activity. So this may be for instance specifically who
should I talk to for certain activities it could be what are the documentations that
I use? In order to complete the steps for this activity. Or one of the systems I need, how I need to
use them and maybe videos, images and so on. But, this is underneath the process diagram,
your process map this is inside the activity. This is where you explain the how. So you have of course noticed that I have
used the white board. The white board is great for these initial
drawings these initial brainstorming about a process. But where do you go from here? Do you take a photo of this and share? That's not very practical if decisions change
if activities change. So you need at this point to put it into an
electronic form that is collaborative. That's the only way forward because your process
is very likely to change when it meets reality. This is just the earliest form of the process,
that we think it is today. But once we involve real representatives of
the service, the department and the supervisors perhaps also the customer. Then things will change and that's where we
need to be very adaptive and where we need a format that is easy to change. That concludes my overview of simple process
mapping I hope you enjoyed watching. Stay tuned for our next episode.
