Also called process map, business process mapping, process flow, as-is mapping
What is process mapping?
Writing down what actually happens, step by step, in the order it happens, so that a process can be argued about instead of remembered.
What else it is called
- Other names
- process map, business process mapping, process flow, as-is mapping
- In French
- cartographie des processus
Related entries
Understanding process mapping
The practice of setting out a piece of work as an ordered list or a drawing: each step, who does it, what it needs to start and what it produces. It has been standard in quality and improvement work for decades, and it exists because almost nobody can describe their own job accurately from memory. Steps get merged, repetition gets described as a single task, and the hours spent waiting for somebody else disappear entirely.
There are several notations and they answer different questions. A SIPOC settles the boundaries before anyone argues about the detail. A swimlane diagram shows who holds the work at each point, which makes every handover visible as a line being crossed. Business process model and notation draws decisions, parallel paths and events with formal symbols. Value stream mapping adds the inventory and the waiting time, which is what makes it the lean tool rather than a general one.
The failure mode is always the same: mapping the ideal process rather than the real one. A map drawn in a meeting room from memory describes a company that does not exist.
In practice
Ask somebody to write out how they handle a customer complaint and you will get eight steps. Sit beside them through a real one and you will count twenty, of which four are waiting for somebody else and three are the same check repeated per affected order.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between process mapping and value stream mapping?
Process mapping sets out the sequence of steps and who does them. Value stream mapping is one kind of process map with the inventory between the steps and the waiting time added, totalled against the working time at the bottom. Use the first to understand how work moves and the second to find where a product sits still.
Why map a process before automating it?
Because automating a process you have not described means automating your assumptions about it. The steps a map adds that nobody listed from memory - the approvals, the handovers, the waiting, the checks repeated once per item - are precisely the ones that decide whether the thing can be automated at all.