Last week, I was provided with the short opportunity to improve a service within an NHS Acute Trust. I had 5 minutes to understand the problem and then I suggested a quick improvement. I’d like to take you through how we arrived at a solution and the resulting lean cost benefit analysis of that solution.…
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From what we have seen so far, we’d have 3 separate, but related process models. One for each of the following: Buy a Book Choose a Book Pay for Book Numbering the processes Some of that was getting difficult to describe. The fact that Pay for Book is a process step in one diagram and a whole…
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In the previous diagram, I’ve put two crosses, not part of any standard. I’ve used them to highlight what’s wrong with the Choose Book process as depicted above. The second of the crosses is easiest to explain. The process step of Scan Book more properly belongs in the Pay for Book process. We can see it in the Pay For Book process, so…
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If you look at the Pay for Book process-step in the top row of the above image, you’ll notice I’ve included a small image of the Pay for Book process. The use of colours is just to help me show how the processes fit together here. It’s incredibly rare to have the process and the more detailed process on…
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Introduction Processes can be broken down into more detailed processes. In this article, I’ll take one of the process steps from the previous article and look in more detail about how it connects to the other components of the process. Some Perspective A key feature of any workflow system is that you should be able to look…
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In the previous article, I introduced a basic process map consisting of a process start point, a process end point, two process steps and connectors. It’s rare that a process map is a straight line like that simplified process. There are usually options which can take the process down different paths. In the case of our…
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Introduction This is the first article in the Fundamentals of Process Mapping series. In the series, I want to discuss the areas that most process mapping tutorials miss. In this bite-sized article, I’ll introduce the idea of a basic process map. Let’s get some background about process mapping first. What is a process map? A process…
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I’ve written before about the elements involved in a process map. In this series of articles, I want to start at the basics and explain what a process map should contain. I’ve seen a fair few methodologies come and go. Fortunately, methodology seems to be settling down with a few interesting branches appearing. I’ve also seen…
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There’s a lot of hype around Lean Startup for at least the last year. The positive thing is that much of this hype is well-deserved; the concepts have changed the thinking of a lot of its readers. Having a foot in both camps as a lean practitioner improving services and organisations and as an entrepreneur roughly adhering…
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I’ve been using process mapping for over a decade now. I’ve probably been the recipient of more process maps than I’ve created, as I’ve had to implement changes that have already been designed by others. I’ve also had to talk many business users through the intricacies of their redesigned processes, especially if they (wrongly) hadn’t…
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