You improve effectiveness by showing specifics of a process. And sometimes we’ve learned hard way that development phase of a project or a process is far more expensive than planning phase. And so by thinking through and perfecting your processes beforehand, you decrease waste in development time. With a detailed process map, you identify and decrease such waste wherever it occurs in process.

Here are a few key points to keep in mind while process mapping:

•Identify core processes to support mission and goals •Determine how to create value for customer throughout process •Map ownership and performance metrics along with process •Engage your people in process mapping to define problems and solutions

Now, let’s break down process map even further.

Define Steps of Process

We’ve just defined big picture process map as a sequence of interactions of multiple processes. These multiple processes consist of multiple steps. As we’ve discussed, benefits are better communication and understanding and a decrease in waste. And this offers a great “big picture” view of your organization’s processes. But…

When you go to write your organization’s procedures, you need more detail. You’ll need a method to define sequence of interactions of each step. And you do this with a procedure map. Here’s an example of a typical procedure map:

With this refined procedure map, you can see steps that go into an organization’s competency process, including suppliers and customers for each of those steps. This is also called SIPOC method. This method identifies Suppliers of specific data used as an Input for Process to create Outputs for Customer. The map also gives you both effectiveness and performance criteria for this process’ owner(s). With such measurement criteria, you set mark for continuous improvement of process.

And so by creating a procedure map, you will further increase communication and understanding within your organization. Procedure maps become a strong tool in training, either to familiarize new employees to their jobs or to increase efficiency and performance with current employees.

Communicate, Understand and Apply Knowledge

Both process and procedure maps are crucial in an organization. And so as a rule of thumb, never develop a procedure or system of procedures without first creating a process and procedure map. Acting like a table of contents, a process map helps organize chapters of a complex book in a way that this knowledge can easily be communicated, understood and applied.

Next time, we will discuss Six Sigma problem-solving tools and answer question: how do you move from seat-of-the-pants decision making to measurable and continuous process improvement?

Chris Anderson is the managing director of Bizmanualz, Inc. and co-author of policies and procedures manuals, producing the layout, process design and implementation to increase performance.

Author: Cameron Lindblom