A tool that visually represents the activities, connections and flows that are happening to a product, service or information as it moves through a process.
2. Why use a product process map?
Organizes the information that was gathered during direct observation into a visual illustration of the current state of the process. Meaningful improvements will only happen when you truly understand how the process really occurs currently.
To identify opportunities to reduce waste and non-value added activities.
To create a more efficient and streamlined process.
Make processes adaptable to change.
To identify the gap between the current reality and ideal state.
To establish high agreement on how the process currently functions and how it should function.
Enable learning.
3. What factors are critical for product process map success?
The map is used in parallel with the activity map.
The map follows and focuses on the product, not the people.
Team directly observes and documents the activities, connections and flows of the process.
Team identifies the scope of the process to be studied and clearly defines boundary points.
Team identifies one common flow through the process and does not focus on exceptions such as ‘sometimes it does this.’
The map isn’t stagnant. The process or product will often change and morph into another form over time.
The larger the project the more it matters coordinating people, equipment and time. Look at Firefox, how very complex its gotten; its process lists are public. Likewise from spacecraft to a DMM, all are complex enough to require tracking methods that are independent of the people involved.
