The Key to Good Process Mapping
by Dr. Ben S. Graham, Jr.,
Chairman
The Ben Graham Corporation
Copyright 2006, The Ben Graham Corporation. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted to post, print and distribute this document in its
original PDF format.
There are three essentials that
must be handled well to assure good process mapping.
1. The operating people whose work is being mapped must supply information for
the map and must understand and support the reasons for the mapping.
2. The map itself must be organized in a way that enables everyone involved to
clearly understand the process.
3. The information that is assembled in the map must be valid.
Support of Operating People
The operating people work directly with the process and are in direct
contact with the facts of the process. In order to map a process we need to
learn about it from these people. We need their cooperation and we won’t get it
if they are suspicious of the reasons for the project.
By far, the most important source of information about any process is the people
who live with it day by day. They know how it is supposed to work and they know
how to make it work and keep it working. They have seen things go wrong and been
a part of making them right. They have lived with its frustrations, know what to
watch out for and have learned how to get past them. If the knowledge of these
people is used to establish the map of the current process, there is a good
chance that it will be realistic.
However, if these people are convinced that the reason the map is being prepared
is to eliminate their employment it is likely that they will be uncooperative.
Even if the true reasons for the project are totally devoid of any chance of
downsizing, this has to be made clear to operating people or they will be quite
apt to assume the threat and react accordingly. A clear statement of intent,
from someone whose authority spans the process, is needed; something like – “It
is our intent to develop the best process possible, we need your help and we
guarantee that there will be no loss of employment as a result of this effort.”
There is also another approach to building maps that ignores operating people
altogether. We do not recommend this approach. It appears to be based on the
phenomenon that: the less you know about something, the simpler it seems. The
person building the map assumes that the operating people are performing simple
tasks that can be logically deduced without their help. This limits the mapping
effort to a systematically organized display of generalities. These maps permit
managers and consultants to feel that they are actually analyzing a process when
they are, in fact, thinking about it in vague, general terms. Then they think up
a new process (without having tapped into realty) and impose it on operating
people (who are in touch with reality).
In conclusion, the people who actually do the work need to cooperate in the
activity of mapping their processes by supplying the information about their
work with which the map is built.
Organizing the Facts in an Effective Map
It is one thing to obtain the cooperation of operating people. It is quite
another to successfully learn from them the facts about their work that are
needed to build an effective process map. The person building the map needs to
push the fact gathering from generalities to specifics by breaking down the
process into its elements, the items that are processed and the steps those
items go through.
As discussed earlier, without the involvement of operating people our process
information is limited to generalizations. But when operating people are
involved, the information gathered may also be limited to generalizations. To
push our fact gathering into specifics we need to focus not on the process as a
whole but rather on the individual items that are processed.
We don’t simply address the receiving process. Rather, we focus on the ‘Pallet
of Goods’ that has been delivered, the ‘Bar Codes’ which arrive with the goods,
the various ‘Screens’ of the ‘Goods in Process Inventory Data Base’ that are
updated first by the by the receiving clerk and later by an inspector and a
production control clerk, the ‘Inspection Ticket’ that is attached to the pallet
of goods, etc. In a hospital process we focus on the ‘Patient’, each copy of the
multi-part ‘Admissions Form’, The ‘Patient Services Form’, the screens of the
‘Patient Data Base’, etc. In a procurement process the focus starts with a
‘Requisition’, then a ‘Procurement Data Base’, the customer’s ‘Order System’,
our ‘Accounts Payable Voucher’, the customer’s ‘Statement’, etc.
First we break a process down into its items. Then we focus on each of these
items step by step. Our map will display the name of each item followed by
symbols which indicate each time that item is moved, delayed, handled, altered,
and inspected. These item lines will also be linked to show when items are
attached, separated or affect one another. Also the item lines will branch when
there are alternatives in the process and sometimes they will rejoin. With a
detailed map like this we come to understand how the process works. This, in
turn, enables us to see opportunities for simplifying and improving.
There are people who don’t want to get into all this detail. Sometimes they
ridicule this detail as unnecessary. (Hopefully much of it will prove to be
unnecessary, but it won’t go away by being ignored.) Process maps don’t become
detailed because of the mapping technique. They become detailed because the
process is detailed. They record reality and put us in a position to effectively
understand and improve that reality.
In conclusion, to get a good process map you want to display the reality of how
the process works by breaking it down into its items and steps.
Making sure that the Data in the Map is Valid
You can gather detailed data from cooperating employees and still wind up
with a map that is shot full of errors. To assure that the data is actually
valid, we need to gather our data from the person who does that work, at the
work place, one step at a time, while observing it being done.
There are two important types of authority in every organization, social
authority and factual authority. The CEO is the top authority of the
organizations social structure and that structure and authority are vital if an
organization is going to function. However, when it comes to factual authority,
the person with the best knowledge and understanding of the specific facts being
dealt with is the top authority. Therefore, when we gather data we strive to
collect it always from the top (factual) authority of the organization and we
treat that person with the respect deserved by a top authority. In doing so, we
show respect for the person and the facts and improve our chances of capturing
reality on our maps.
(When there are a number of people doing the same work, gather your data from
the most skilled, the one the others turn to when they have questions. You will
then be gathering your data from the top authority in the organization.)
If you actually follow the work through the process, gathering data on each step
of the process while observing it at the work place, you will eliminate most of
the causes of faulty data. You arrive at the work place and are introduced to
the employee (usually by the supervisor). Then you ask the employee for a
demonstration. It is usually easier for a person to show you their work than to
explain it. We will invariably get both, explanation and demonstration, with the
emphasis on the later.
As the employee does the work it becomes obvious when subsidiary items come into
play, items that might easily have been left out of an explanation. These items
are usually there because they are necessary parts of the process as it is now
being performed. Easily overlooked, their role is also missed as the process is
being reworked and, when the new process is installed, another subsidiary item
will need to be created to fill this need.
Compare this type of data gathering with talking to a group of employees
simultaneously in a conference room. You miss all of the visual information of
the work place itself. You don’t always hear about a step from a person who
actually performs it. Unnecessary confusion creeps in concerning sequence of
steps, confusion that would be avoided if the steps were taken one at a time in
separate interviews. And, there is a very high probability that important
details will be omitted.
By carefully following the process through the work places step by step we tie
up less employee time and get a better, more accurate map quicker. The cost in
employee time is obvious. If you pull together a group of all of the people who
work in a process all of them are tied up for the discussion of the entire
process, not just their own part. The only way that the group meeting could
possibly be less time consuming for the individuals would be if the data
gathering was done superficially. As for actually completing the map sooner, the
visual information available at the work place provides a level of clarity that
produces understanding far faster than people talking. This clarity and
understanding more than compensate for the time required to get from work place
to work place.
In conclusion, to get valid data, gather it as close to the reality as you can.
Summary
1. The people doing the work are the best source of realistic data for
building a process map.
2. To get cooperation from the people doing the work it is critical that they
not be concerned about downsizing resulting from the process changes.
3. The people doing the work are the top ‘factual’ authorities on that work and
therefore deserve to be treated with the respect due a top authority.
4. Generalities are the enemy of good process maps. Push for specifics in you
data gathering. To get specifics, break the process down into its items and
steps.
5. Gather data at the work place with both explanation and demonstration.
6. Display each item as a separate line on your map with its own steps.
7. Display effects between items on your map where one item supplies information
that is used to do something to another item (i.e. transcribing information from
one item to another, using one item to check information on another, etc.
8. Display alternatives where the work is processed differently under different
circumstances.
9. Display assembly and disassembly by bringing item lines together and by
separating them.
10. The real test of a process map is not that it makes sense to people who have
never done the work but rather that it makes sense to and is vouched for by those
who do the work.
DR. BEN S. GRAHAM, JR., is the Chairman of the Ben Graham
Corporation.
His company pioneered the field of business process improvement, and has provided process
improvement consulting, coaching and education services to organizations across
North America since 1953. He has helped thousands of people make sense of
their business processes through his firm, his courses,
his lectures and his writings. He holds four university degrees; B.A. (with Phi
Beta Kappa), B.F.A., M.B.A. and Ph.D. (awarded with distinction).
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