Tutorial- How to Run a Process Mapping Workshop

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

00:00:05Brad

Hi everyone, I'm Brad. This is Joel from Triaster, and today we're going to show you how to run a process mapping workshop.

00:00:19Joel

First, you're going to need some equipment: a roll of brown paper, tape to stick it to the wall, three different coloured sets of Post-it notes, and a Sharpie pen. The reason for three colours is that if you're process mapping in the noun-verb methodology, one's for activities, one's for deliverables, and one's for decisions.

00:00:45Joel

The first thing we need to do is decide on the process to map — Brad and I are going to take you through how to make a hot beverage. I'd write the title of the process on the paper to keep you within scope — if we're mapping in the noun-verb methodology, the title starts with a verb, so this is going to be called "Make a Hot Beverage."

00:01:07Joel

Once you've got your title, you need to identify the start and end deliverable. If we're making a hot beverage, what do we start with? What tells us we need to create one?

00:01:39Brad

You have a need.

00:01:40Joel

Exactly — a need or a requirement. When working with deliverables, we try to imagine the words "show me" before them. This one, I'd call a thirsty person — somebody who needs a beverage making. If you think about the noun-verb methodology, this is a deliverable, a noun — you could literally grab a thirsty person and show them.

00:02:10Joel

What's our end point? We're making a hot beverage. Our start point is a thirsty person. What's the end point?

00:02:17Brad

You have the hot beverage.

00:02:18Joel

Exactly. So on the Post-it note goes "Hot Beverage." We're going to keep this process very high level, not going into the intricacies of making specific hot beverages.

00:02:52Joel

We've got a thirsty person in the room. What's the first activity we do? I'm just going to put "type of beverage" with a question mark — and let's say there are three normal outputs: tea, coffee, hot chocolate.

00:03:45Joel

So the decision has been made — we want a tea, coffee, or hot chocolate. The first activity is: you need to go and get some stuff to make the drink. In the noun-verb methodology, how would you word that? I'd say: gather equipment.

00:04:12Joel

We now need a deliverable — what do we now have as a result of doing that activity?

00:04:28Brad

You have the equipment.

00:04:29Joel

Exactly. Sometimes it feels like you're stating the obvious with the noun-verb methodology, but that's the point — if you've got a very obvious deliverable from your activity, that means the activity is worth doing; you know what the expected output is going to be. When you take it right down to basics, noun-verb is process improvement in its rawest form. You're just trying to find out what people are producing by carrying out the activities they say they're doing.

00:05:18Joel

We know we're going to make a hot beverage. We've gathered some equipment. What next?

00:05:29Brad

You get the ingredients.

00:05:36Joel

Exactly — so in the noun-verb, after "gather equipment," the next activity is "gather ingredients," and the deliverable is "ingredients."

00:06:43Brad

Then finally, we need to make the coffee.

00:06:45Joel

What I tend to do is: because the process is called "Make a Hot Beverage," I wouldn't have an activity on the map using the same words. So here I'd say "combine" — you combine the equipment and the ingredients, which gives you a hot beverage. There's more to it than that, but at this high-level process, that's all we're worried about — what's the most high-level step to take us from here to here?

00:07:44Joel

So we've kept within the scope: we started with a thirsty person, and ended up with a hot beverage. We tend to map end-to-end processes and connect them together with off-page connectors — so this process could then link to "consume a hot beverage," and you could also have "clear up the mess after creating a hot beverage."