Understand first the "why" of your Process Mapping Effort.

 "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious"

Albert Eistein.


It can sound obvious, but the purpose of the process mapping effort should be defined clearly from the beggining. If not, all the construct can be useless and the organization may feel dissapointed with the results of the effort. I have seen several mapping efforts that at the end didn´t fit with what the company expected from it.

I suggest to use techniques, like 5 Whys, to understand the roots of the process mapping effort in order to select what is the best approach. "5 Whys" is a simple technique for problem solving, typically used in the phase of "analysis" of the Six Sigma methodology, Kaizen and Lean Manufacturing, but also can be used in isolation. This technique was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda and was built by Toyota in its "Toyota Production System".

This technique consists in asking questions iteratively in order to find the root cause of a problem. For example, let´s use this technique to understand the root cause analysis of an initiative of business process mapping:

You can use this technique or any other that help you understand the "why" and the expectations for the process mapping initiative. When you agree with your client what is the purpose, select the best approach for process mapping, in order to guarantee that you will have the proper tools to get the expected outcomes. For example, you can select the tool depending on the business situations as illustrated in the following table:

As you can see, you should select the right approach from the beggining. If there are several issues you want to solve, use a more general approach (like swim lanes or BPMN). For solving specific business situations, you may need to select a specialized technique (like VSM for improving processes).