Process Story Telling Meetup (8/9)

Highlights and Q&A

Agenda

I. Process Story Telling HighlightsI. Communication – The Primary ObjectiveII. AudienceIII. Story Telling via the “Common Ground”IV. Business versus System Point of ViewV. Capturing the Story with Physical ElementsVI. Adding the System Point of ViewVII. The Entire Story

II. Q&AI. How do you describe process that needs to be very detailed?II. How do you keep readers engaged across multiple pages?III. What are the fundamental requirements for any process map?IV. When is a process map an appropriate document to use?V. Is there a tool for process mapping that incorporates story telling concepts?

Process Story Telling Highlights

How to effectively communicate process

Communication – The Primary Objective

• All action that transforms inputs into outputs can be defined as part of a process. A business’s processes must be fully understood by those accountable for optimizing or managing them, in order to improve or control those processes.

• We map process in order to organize, package, understand, and ultimately communicate those processes to those that are accountable for them. This is the primary objective for any type of process capture and visualization, and the first step in any business endeavor that involves changing a process

• Unmanaged processes tend to become more complex over time, which increases waste, cost, and the demand for iterative process management. This need for process management is growing exponentially due to increasing availability of data and stronger pressure to reduce cost based on market pressure.

With a Diverse Audience, Communication is Complicated

The types of stakeholders that need to read and understand process maps are very diverse:

• Operations Professionals and Subject Matter Experts• Process Engineers• Technical and IT Resources• Project Teams• Executives and Managers• Third Party Consultants and Vendors• Audit and Compliance Professionals

In order to visualize process for such a diverse audience, a common ground has to be established that is intuitive and universal.

Story Telling via the “Common Ground”• People are tactile in nature and can intuitively understand storytelling that

roots them in something they can imagine physically doing, walking through, or observing.

• Process should be visualized and communicated in a way that anyone from any background can imagine themselves seamlessly executing all the steps necessary to perform a process from start to finish.– Without physical continuity in the story, comprehension is lost.

• There are two points of view to every process: the physical point of view, which people can easily grasp, and the non-physical point of view, which supports all processes but confuses understanding for a physically rooted audience (for example, what happens inside the computer after you submit something).

The common ground is making sure that all process visualization is done strictly from the physical point of view

Business versus System Point of View

• The physical drivers of process involve any action that is completed by people to advance the process – this is called the “business” point of view.

• The non-physical drivers of process involve any action that is completed automatically by a non-person entity to advance the process – this is called the “system” point of view.

• Every process involves a mix of both elements, and that mix is trending towards automation as time goes on.

100% People (Business) Driven

100% Automation (System) Driven

Processes are becoming increasingly automated over time

Focus Only on the “Business” Process

• As process becomes more automated, the communication becomes increasingly disjointed and difficult to understand if these non-physical elements become integrated with the visualization and story telling.

• Separate the “system” process layer when you capture process information and focus only on the physical “business” process to maintain intuitive story telling and strong communication.

• The fundamentals of physical story telling are captured by the classic “5 W” model: what, who, where, when, and why.

Capturing the Story with Physical Elements

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The solution is designed to capture and communicate process based on this model:

Adding the “System” Point of View

• There are going to be stakeholders who are more concerned with the automated (non-physical) behavior that supports the “business” process and completes the entire story of the process holistically.

• System steps should be kept strictly to commentary in order to add the necessary context. For very complex system driven processes, additional underlying layers of process could be associated with the “business” mapping – this is not in scope for this presentation.

• All stakeholders will be able to understand the “business” process, but some stakeholders may also require these additional details which can be added as extra context to the main story.

The Entire Story• At this point you should understand how to structure a cohesive process story: first,

by focusing on the business process and then, by adding system process or context as needed in a controlled way:

• Once the information is captured and structured this way, the next step to effectively communicate process is to visually present it in a way that will consistently and effectively communicate your story to the reader.

Q&A

Answering questions from the Meetup

How do you describe process that needs to be very detailed?

• For complex processes, where all the information can not fit in one visual frame, layers of detail must be used such that every frame contains an entire process with a logical start and end point.

• Detail layers allow for complex processes to be simplified such that they can fit in one frame. With less detail, a large process scope can be represented in less space.

• If a reader needs more detail, the higher level process frame can be explained in more detail in lower level process frames that represent complete sub-processes of the higher level process

Get out of bed Grooming Dress Eat

breakfast

Brush teeth Shave Shower Comb Hair

Find floss Floss Teeth

Apply toothpaste to brush

Brush Rinse Out Mouth

Higher Level

Lower Level

• Keep the map organized! Being well organized and easy to read is what keeps readers engaged.

• Process is intuitively organized in only one way: groupings of discrete, actionable steps that contain a logical start and end point.

• Steps should always contain one, logically organized unit of action (this could contain multiple items if they are closely associated or will always happen together)

• Every visual frame presented to a reader should also represent a complete process step (albeit at a higher detail level) with a logical start and end point; otherwise, you rely on the reader to absorb partial pieces of information and put it together between frames – this causes confusion, damages story continuity, and weakens communication effectiveness.

Frame 1

How do you keep readers engaged across multiple pages?

What are the fundamental requirements for any process map?

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The essential requirements for any process map of any kind are simply the information collected around the 5 W’s of physical story telling. The model that shows how this plays on a map is included again below for reference:

When is a process map an appropriate document to use?

• A process map is the right document to use when trying to communicate what a process IS or how it is executed.

• You should not use a process map for other communication objectives such as:• Explaining why is a process important• Listing the major outcomes of a process• Explaining how to change a process• Explaining the history or context behind a process• Explaining the reason a process should be used

• Generally, a process map should explain exactly how a process is being done, the actions behind its workings.

• While a process map can (and should) support many of the communication objectives above, it is not the correct primary document to meet those objectives.

Is there a tool for process mapping that incorporates story telling concepts?

• This process story telling methodology can be applied within any tool; however, no tool that we are aware of has been specifically built for it (yet).

• The meetup hosts are currently building a tool called CaVi that would support process mapping with this solution in mind. If you have any questions about anything presented here, or our work/progress on CaVi, please email us at teamcoven@covenholdings.com

THANKS FOR COMING!

Thank you so much for coming to our meetup – we hope to see you again in future sessions and please don’t hesitate to post additional questions on the group discussion board.

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