A Beginners Guide to Business Process Mapping

Editor's note: this transcript was generated by AI and has been lightly edited for clarity and relevance — some sections have been shortened or removed, and minor transcription errors corrected.

Full transcript

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How to process map: 10 steps to get you started. Why should you process map? W.H. Deming said, "If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." It's hard to quantify the worth of processes, or how effective they are, without being able to see and measure them.

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By creating a process map, you're producing a visual example of your business processes, complete with inputs and outputs. Organisations that perform the transformation of inputs into outputs well generally manage to meet or exceed customer expectations, and those that do it best are invariably the most successful.

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One: identify the process. Identify the most urgent process problem you have and move backwards from there.

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Two: identify the start and end point. Write the start and end point on different Post-it notes and place them at the beginning and end of the process, so you know when to stop.

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Three: get buy-in from stakeholders and process experts. Make sure you have the process expert involved, or you'll be in danger of capturing an incomplete or erroneous process.

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Four: define your process by creating a title at the top of the page.

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Five: capture the process. Running a workshop using Sharpie pens, Post-it notes, and brown paper or a whiteboard is key when working with a group, and then later you transfer it to process mapping software.

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Six: you need a consistent methodology. At Triaster, we use our own simple noun-verb methodology — each input or output is described using a noun, each activity is described using a verb.

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Seven: use shapes to represent the elements — activities, connectors, external activities, external deliverables, decisions, deliverables, and off-page connectors.

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Eight: focus on the output. Activities have no value in themselves — they attract a cost. The value of a process is in its deliverables. To capture a deliverable, ask: "what does the activity produce?"

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Nine: you need to use it. Make sure that if you go to all the work of capturing the process, you actually use it — this will be easier with a proper process management system.

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Ten: make it accessible to your staff. The whole reason for process mapping is so your staff can access the correct procedure for carrying out the process.