Welcome to the series of How To:Quality. Your 3 min guide on how Quality Professionals address various business needs to drive Improvement and Governance.
In my previous How To Quality I talked about how to set a policy in the context that best suits you as a team or as an organisation. Once that policy is set, how do you get on about implementing it. There are plenty of process map tools that are available out there, but how do you choose which tool is the right one to select for the task at hand? Do you know that some tools are not fit for purpose?
So let’s start with the the top (in my opinion) four types of process maps available out there:
- Flow chart
- SIPOC
- Swimlane
- Value stream
In this post, I will share a brief explanation of each type of process mapping and what it is useful for.
How to: Quality
Let us start with a brief definition of each of the four types of process maps.
Flow chart:
This is one of the simplest process map tools to use. They give you the baseline of what takes place for a process. I personally use them if I want to understand the ‘what’ of a certain process. Plenty of software available to help you draw a basic flow chart. My advise is keep this simple, easy to read and follow. Use flow charts as your spring board to use other tools to respond to certain needs. It is helpful if you are conducting your initial exploratory phase of a process
SIPOC:
This tool is called systems, inputs, processes, outputs and customers. This process takes it a step further from the previous map. It helps you identify ‘what’ takes place and with which stakeholder. This is very helpful when your process includes several handoffs between departments and suppliers. If the customer is involved in this process, then this will help you map this out and understand the customer experience in all of it. I use this tool if I want to improve a process, removing time waste or unnecessary steps that might have some delays on the customers.
Swimlane:
Swinlane is not very different than SIPOC, but I consider it to be one step removed from SIPOC. This tool is also helpful to map a complex process and understand all the stakeholders that are involved. This tool focuses mainly on the handoffs between department. It helps you to understand which department is heavily involved in a process, identify if there are any bottle necks that require attention. I find this tool helpful if you want to start allocating SLAs for steps which all those involved in the process can benefit from. This is a good way to drive improvement.
Value stream:
The most advanced tool of a process map which is very impactful when you want to drive your change management project. This sheds the light on what is value added and what is not for a product or a service to be delivered to the customer. If you run an sig-sigma or lean-sig sigma project, this tool is used. This helps you assess what each process is used for and whether it adds value or not. It helps you define what the step is essential or not. Going into such detail will help you make informed decisions for any steps you may want to remove entirely from the process to drive efficiency.
Questions you need to answer to determin which tool to use:
- What is the main objective of documenting this process map?
- Is this to raise awareness or to explore improvement possibilities?
- What stage of your change project are you at?
- How complex and diverse are your stakeholders?
- Is your team operating efficiently? i.e. can they handle a large influx of the same type of work?
Understanding the need of mapping a process helps you choose the right tool to use. In many situations, you might use one tool and follow it up by another based on the stage you are at evaluating that process, or responding to a business need. Let me take you through an example.
Case Study
You just joined a growing organisation which supports a large entrepreneur community. They offer memberships for individuals from around the world. Let us call it OrgE. OrgE is at a key junction of its life and is preparing for a global growth. You are the Chief Quality Officer who is tasked with helping OrgE build foundations to help it scale its growth effectively and efficiently. At different stages of this task, you may use different types of process map tools. The tool you use is not only dictated by the stage of your project, it is also dictated by how involved and committed your stakeholders are.
The Discovery stage: in this stage, using a basic flow chart will help you understand the moving parts of the acquiring and onboarding individuals. As an outsider joining the organisation, flow charts are a good way to help you get buy-in from your internal customers that you have a level of understanding of what they do. It is good to build trust. You will be surprised at how much they discover when they see this basic flow chart.
The Let’s try and reduce redundant work stage: in this stage, you can use SIPOC or swimlane process tool depending on how complex you identify the acquisition and onboarding process is. For me personally, it is a natural progress from the flow chart. A flow chart can give you an area which you believe is a bottleneck or an area of failure, slowness, that OrgE should focus on improving. Using one of these tools will help you shed light on each of the steps an each of the departments. The beauty of these tools is that they bring visibility and could drive a high sense of collaboration between departments. People start to gather a higher level of understanding of how their work impacts others and ultimately the customer.
The Sky is the limit stage: This stage is when you are ready to drive impactful change that could be seen disruptive by some stakeholders. OrgE has run a successful marketing campaign that saw its membership acquisition rate rocket from an average of 20 a month to 200 a month. The influx of such requests might mean that your teams and your systems are not able to adhere to the SLAs they were committed to earlier. This could also mean that OrgE is about to drop the customer experience level they are known for. Value stream tool is very helpful over here. It is good for many reasons: driving efficiencies and removing any non-value add steps that are not essential to the entire product/service journey. It helps you identify the human-system interaction to determine what shifts you can make to certain process steps. OrgE identified through the value stream process that their sales team have been asking their prospects to complete two forms online because their systems are not integrated (front end and back end). As the Chief Quality Officer, you can bring this to the executive board with proposals to hire, change, or invest in new systems.
Quality Professionals around the world, you provide so much value to your organisations. Make sure you use your toolkit to help businesses thrive. And to all CEOs out there, if you have not utilised the skillset of your Quality Professionals, what are you waiting for? Quality Professionals are your one business partner that has visibility over all departments, their strengths and pain points, and can help alleviate some of these pain points.
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