Processes · 5 min read
Making business processes easier to manage
Complicated processes are rarely designed that way. They grow one exception at a time. A few simple questions can help you simplify them.
Write the process as it actually happens
Before improving a process, describe how it really works today, including the workarounds. Most documented processes describe how work was supposed to happen years ago.
Seeing the real steps on one page often makes the unnecessary ones obvious.
Questions that reveal complexity
Go through each step and ask:
- Why does this step exist, and who relies on its output?
- Could this step be combined with the one before or after it?
- Is an approval here protecting against a real risk, or an old one?
- What happens if we simply skip it for a month?
Standardize the common case
Design the process around the typical situation and treat exceptions separately. When every exception is built into the main flow, the flow becomes difficult for anyone to follow.
A simple written procedure for the common case, with a clear path for escalating unusual ones, makes a process far easier to manage and to hand to someone else.