Workflow mapping is drawing one process in your business the way it really runs today: every step, every hand-off, every system it touches. You do it to find the steps that waste time before you pay to fix anything.
What is workflow mapping?
A workflow map follows one piece of work from start to finish. An order, an invoice, a new hire, a customer complaint. It shows:
- Who touches it. Each person or team gets a lane.
- What they do. Each step, in order, in plain words.
- Where it waits. The inbox, the approval, the Tuesday batch.
- Which systems it passes through. The CRM, the spreadsheet on somebody's desktop, the email thread.
- Where it breaks. The steps that cause mistakes or get done twice.
The map is drawn from the people who do the work, not from the policy manual. The two rarely match.
How is a workflow map different from a service blueprint?
Scope. A workflow map follows one process inside the business. A service blueprint follows the customer across the whole business, front stage and back stage, and shows how many workflows line up behind one customer experience.
Start with a workflow map when the problem lives inside one process. Use a blueprint when the problem is how the customer gets passed around. What service design is covers the blueprint side.
How is a workflow map made?
- Pick one process with a clear start and end.
- Get the people who do it in a room, not only their manager.
- Put each step on paper, on a wall, in order.
- Walk it twice: once for the normal case, once for the case that goes wrong.
- Mark the waits, the repeats, and the workarounds.
- Rank the fixes by how much they would help and how hard they would be.
That is the core of my workshops. What happens in a one-day AI workshop shows how it runs with a whole team.
What does it cost?
Inside the one-day workshop, $3,500, the team maps its key processes on the wall. In the two-day version, $6,500, I come back with clean maps of those processes, the hand-offs, and a plan by department. A single process can also be mapped as part of a service design engagement, from $3,500.
When should I map before buying software?
Always, for anything that touches more than one team. Software bought before the map gets shaped around the problem instead of fixing it. Map first and you often find the fix is a decision, not a tool.
What should I not do?
Do not map everything at once. Pick the process that costs the most time or the most customers, and map that. Do not let one manager draw the map from memory. And do not frame the map and hang it on the wall. It is a working tool. Change it when the process changes.
If you have a process in mind, describe it on the start form.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.