Is Your Work a Process? Here’s Why It Should Be

Published 28 April 8 4:23 PM | Aaron

Is your work a process? Every day, what do you do? Do you have routine assignments that you need to perform? If you do, then your work should be a process.

A "Business Process" is a way of automating all of the routines that occur in your work; it defines steps to take, inputs to respond to, and the appropriate actions to take for any given decision.

I wear a lot of hats in the course of my work: analyst, marketer, blogger, developer, and so forth. Every hat requires different routines, and in order to get the best results with each position, I define processes and subsequently follow them.

For instance, each time I author a blog entry for The SmartDraw Blog I follow a process where I perform the same tasks in the same order: pick a topic, a title, write the body, put in some images, check to make sure the title still fits, proofread, and so forth.

The Benefits of Business Processes

ITtoolbox has a great post covering the benefits of BPM (Business Process Management,) but I'd like to take the opportunity to share the benefits of defining a business process that I've experienced:

  • More Predictable Results - By implementing a standard process for your routines you make the outcomes of your work more predictable. Think about it. If you follow the same steps every time you're faced with a routine problem then your outcomes will, in fact, also become routine.
  • Measurable Quality - When you have a standard process which produces predictable results then you can effectively quantify and measure the quality of the results you produce; when you don't follow a process and the results are unpredictable then the task of measuring the quality of your output becomes virtually impossible.
  • Easier to Train New Employees - Having a standard business process reduces the complexity of training new employees significantly, simply because you already have a tested, proven process that produces quality results when followed.

Organizing Your Business' Routines into Processes is Beneficial Exercise in Itself

The act of defining a business process is in itself, extremely helpful, as it allows you to uncover the flaws in your current modus operandi and helps you refine your business methods without the unpredictable costs and lengthy duration of trial and error.

The easiest way to model a business process is with a flow chart.

I'm going to use this blog post as an example of a routine activity that can be improved using business processes and flow charts.

I'll start off my flow chart by drawing how I'd write a blog entry without using a process.

 

Well... That doesn't seem very organized, does it? Given that all of the actual labor is compacted into a single step, it appears as though I need to improve my process!

I'd start by breaking down my current single activity (writing the blog entry) and breaking it down into smaller components.

 

A small improvement; I've managed to derive a sequence of steps to perform, but this still isn't sufficient, as it doesn't tell me anything about the inputs that influence my decisions and actions taken.

Now we're getting somewhere. My blog producing process is starting to take into account all of the additional concerns and checks that affect the quality of my blog entries. For the sake of succinctness I'm going to cut off my process development here, but you get the idea. 

Take a look at my final yes/no decision in this flow chart. My original blog authoring process didn't require me to verify that body of my blog entry cohered with my title by the time I was done writing it, so in theory I could produce a blog entry with an entirely irrelevant title using my original "process."

If I conform to my final, developed process, then the outcomes of my blogging efforts will be more predictable and I will be able to measure the quality of my output with a greater degree of precision than was previously available.

Really, there is no reason not to incorporate processes into your business activities; they make it easier to train new employees, help you uncover errors in your current routines, help make activity outcomes more predictable, and enable you to effectively measure the quality of your output.

Learn More About Creating & Drawing Business Processes

If you'd like to see how easy it is to map your business' routines into actual business processes then watch our flowcharting screencast "How to Map a Business Process with SmartDraw."

Also, if you'd like to play around with the diagram that I used in this example, you can download a free trial of SmartDraw and open the example file below.

[Example] Flow Chart - Basic Blogging Process - Step 1.sdr

Comments

# Tom Hilgart said on April 29, 2008 9:24 AM:

Aaron, thanksfor starting this blog. I have the SmartDraw application but have only used it a couple of times. This blog will prompt me to practice using the various templates and likely give me some ideas about improving the effectiveness of some of mhy work. I'm looking forward to your series so I'll subscribe to your RSS.

# Peter said on April 29, 2008 11:22 AM:

Nice in theory, but not practical.

# Aaron said on April 29, 2008 3:55 PM:

@Tom,

Thanks for the subscription - I hope you enjoy it! I also took some time to check out your State Parkway Partners blog and I liked your most recent article on accountability issues.

@Peter,

What's impractical about a business process? A business process is simply a tool for consolidating your business operations into uniform routines - I outlined the benefits of uniformity in the the post, but what about it is impractical?

# Rich said on April 29, 2008 6:38 PM:

Hi Aaron

I notice what you are doing here with creating flowcharts and I think it's great. Our company did this some time ago and had flowcharts everywhere!

I was wondering If you could shed some light as to how SmartDraw the company itself manages groups of flowcharts that are related. Do they link flows together? Store them in once place? Have them on an internal intranet.

It would be interesting to know how this concept could be expanded to cope once an organisation has started creating flows for MANY of it's processes.

Thanks

Rich

# Fred said on April 30, 2008 6:41 AM:

Thanks for the article Aaron. I've gotten into admin incidentally and really need to build skill. Hadn't thought about this much till now. Very pertinent and useful.

# Paul said on April 30, 2008 5:03 PM:

Rich:

Our use of process charts has expanded enormously since we released Smartdraw 2008 because they are so easy to make now.

We use them for everything new and we are going through our older processes and documenting those too.

So far we haven't use the hyperlinking feature for our own charts. We store them in a structured SharePoint system with descriptive names so we can see them listed together.

For example all of the marketing procedures are in the SharePoint marketing folder.

Paul Stannard

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