Map the path of one thing
Do not try to map the business. Pick one unit of work — an enquiry, an order, a job, a claim — and follow it from the moment it appears to the moment it is finished and paid for. A single complete path teaches you more than a partial map of everything.
Record five things at every step
- Who does it, by role and by name
- Which system it happens in, including email and spreadsheets
- What information is needed, and where it comes from
- How long it takes, and how long it waits
- What happens when it goes wrong
The waiting time is the one most people leave out, and it is usually larger than the working time. It is also the cheapest thing to fix.
Find the shadow systems
Every organisation has them: the spreadsheet that runs scheduling, the personal inbox holding the only record of a decision, the notebook behind the counter. They are not a failure of discipline — they are evidence that the official system does not do something people need.
Shadow systems are a requirements document written by the people who do the work.
Mark the handovers
Work goes missing at boundaries: sales to delivery, delivery to finance, one team to another. At each handover, ask how the receiving side knows it has arrived. If the answer involves someone remembering to send a message, that is a candidate for automation.
Then rank, do not solve
Resist redesigning while mapping. Finish the picture, then rank the steps by time consumed, risk carried and how often they cause a customer to notice. The top three are your project. The rest is a roadmap.
Keep it to a page
A map nobody reads has no value. One page per process, in language the people doing the work recognise, is worth more than a formal notation that requires training to interpret.
