Process Mapping (Making the system visible)
Most of us are familiar with Process Mapping. It is a great tool when we want to understand the processes, how they work, and what happens in real life.
Furthermore, it is well-known (or I hope) that the processes do not necessarily match the written procedure or the manager's thoughts, as in the Figure below.
We may analyse situations with it. For example, in a postmortem investigation of a near-miss accident, we identified 20 (!!!) process violations. We could blame the pressure of on-time delivery, but.
In other instances, we faced a problem: we had to transfer an operation, but previous projects were late, and quality levels were questionable. My team did not want to fail. The original target was to understand why the other project was behind schedule. We started with an A3 page to draw a process map.
We realised that the project complexity could not be captured unless we extended our analysis to the milestone checklist (which helped a lot). However, it caused the problem itself. We discovered two main items:
1. People usually start with a top-down approach, completing the checklist one after another. An issue comes when a task close to the bottom has a long, unexpected duration. To keep the review date, at this point, they would be far too late.
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2. Additionally, to the 250+ items in 5 milestone reviews, we identified 100 decisive activities and tasks critical to the project. For example, if we wanted to validate a part (milestone checklist item), first, we had to measure its dimensions. Before that, the supplier had to produce it. We had to order it and submit the correct documentation, and the supplier had to be created in ERP, etc. These were all non-milestone items.
3. We introduced a new layer: the box background colour was grey if a document was required for a task. If it was a milestone checklist item then dark grey, if not then light grey.
Finally, we ended up with 10 A3 pages of swim lane/deployment map, guiding the team to meet our goal. The attached picture shows the complexity of one milestone. Making it visual helped to see the system, understand the logical sequence and find the critical path.
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An interesting application of process mapping to forensic analysis/triage of a project. Applying process mapping to the initial project plan may help discover otherwise unknown project risks and critical path tasks. Your multiple viewpoints are spot on!