Now that I have a rough idea of what processes I need to document, it’s time for me to start mapping out the individual process. The act of doing this will help me break this down further.
Working within a training team, I figured it was best to start with us.
This will also help provide a point of discussion when I talk to other teams.
Allow me to see how our process differs from theirs and why.
We have already defined the general processes we need to begin mapping.
The first process I am documenting is our Registration process for students.
Eventually, I will do all of the processes, but I wanted to start with something that was pretty well-defined and possessed common agreement among all of the participants of this process (ie our team).
Choosing something “easy” allows me to
- Make sure I am using a visualization that makes sense to everyone
- Reduces the risk of me setting off alarms around what I am doing (remember – “Planning” can be perceived as threatening. Here Be Monsters.)
- Shows progress quickly to others.
- Gives me a quick “discussion point” for the other stakeholders.
- Gets me comfortable with the process of building and validating these flowcharts.
- Provides more bandwidth to experiment with the architecture program itself vs arguing over the accuracy of the individual flowchart (at least….that’s the hope)
Since I am in very early days, I still have templates and systems to develop around this effort.
I’ve got a mess of processes to document.
- Have I figured out a process to develop these flowcharts quickly and accurately so I can focus on the accuracy of the information vs. playing with Visio / PowerPoint / Archimate / other flowcharting tool?
- Do other people understand what I am trying to communicate? Stakeholders? Executives?
- Does this fit in with the Architecture team’s standards? (Remember, this is going to help them too…)
- Is this easy to edit and share once I am done with it?
- How many other people do I want to give edit permissions to these workflows to?
- How I am going to organize this information? Can other people find it?
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So before documenting – I asked the Architecture team the following questions:
- Is there a particular tool you want me to use?
- Their answer – no.
- I’m using Visio for this effort, but you can also use PowerPoint, Word, or drawing stuff out on paper and taking a picture with your cell phone.
- Actually…drawing stuff out on paper or using sticky notes and a wall isn’t a bad way to start.
- Is there a particular modeling technique you want this in?
- Their answer – “Well, Archimate would be nice”
My solution – just getting it down first. I have a lot to learn about Archimate and will use this particular flowchart to start learning it.
This link provides some best practices for documenting workflows with Archimate.
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