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Now we are going to discuss the topic of process mapping.
And there are several different types.
The main points you have to think about before you start your actual process
mapping are you want to make sure you don't bite off too much when you start.
If the scope is too large, it's going to take a lot,
a lot of time to map out an entire process.
So watch out for the scope to start with.
And you should start with just an overall understanding rather than immediately
going to the details and then you can quickly select internal points as you go.
But start with your reasonable scope but
at kind of a high level understanding as you start.
And the process map selection that you use going forward
really depends on the goals of your process improvement itself.
The three types that we're going to describe to you,
the first one is traditional process maps.
It's very task level oriented.
It's best for very complex tools.
But it does have a large cost, because it will take time to get all the decision
points and all the correct details, and also a number of people who have to be
involved in those conversations to make sure that all those details are correct.
The goal of that process map is to reduce the steps and
possibly eliminate decision points to streamline the process.
The swim lane is very, very similar to the traditional, but
you'll see as we go through it, it is a different format that
highlights things of handoffs and waits in between steps.
So going from a traditional to a swim lane really has the same content but
is presented in a different way.
And the last one which we'll discuss in a following video is on value stream
mapping which is a higher level of detail and is looking at overall flow from
a much higher level that doesn't have the task level details of the first two,
and it doesn't have any of the decision points.
So let's start with the traditional process map,
this should be what most of you are very familiar with.
You can see the blocks that have each one of the tasks, and
the diamonds are the decision points, so it's a yes/no in each one of those blocks.
On the far left and the far right you see the little ovals,
the little buttons or chicklets as people call them.
Those can be the starting or stopping points for the process.
Unfortunately, processes become so complex that those bubbles are also
useful from going from one subphase to another subphase or
from page to page to page so you know where one ends and the other picks up.
You can see this is very, very complex and
it has the loss of who does what is kind of difficult to see.
You don't know which individual, and
also the flow in time is not often evident in this process map.
Now, if you look at the takeaways for the process map, again,
high complexity, multiple decision points.
And it's less suitable for projects that are looking at lead
times since you can't see that as well in some of the other ways.
Now here's the swim lane.
These are actually the same blocks in the same test but in a different format.
You're familiar with the concept of swim lanes from, say, the Olympic swimmers.
So each lane is this different individual's roles and responsibilities.
And as each one of those roles is switched from one to the other,
that's when the line crosses from one lane to the other.
So that is a good use for this tool because now it identifies the handoffs.
You can easily see who is responsible for which task and
when the handoffs take place.
Also, it often moves from left to right,
because that is the time sequence that the process is proceeding.
So this one is a little bit easier to see the individuals,
the handoffs, and the timeline.
Now remember that handoffs really are very prone to mistakes because each
one of our communications could be that we don't communicate properly.
We don't communicate the correct information.
Or there even are delays when the communication is attempting to take place.
So the takeaways for the swim lanes, tasks handoff as the earlier one,
but it's the handoff that is showing me that this one is better.
And by seeing who is responsible for what activities, you can also
identify if there are unbalanced needs on one person or the other.
Bob Hody
