Business Process Mapping for Effective Business Analysis

Businesses goes through regular changes. This is to transform into a more lean or effective state of process optimization. The new digital economy and improvements that are available with advancements of technology is a driving force in this regard. For any business to improve their process with technology or any other method of process optimization they need to find a Starting point. So what is that? Today lets dive into it.

To improve the business process, the first thing that should be done is to identify the current business process. Without identifying the current process it is impossible to identify what need to be fine tuned to optimize in a future process. At this stage comes the Business Analyst with his/her arsenal of tools. Why a BA? A BA is the enabler in an organization for optimizing processes using technology. And delivering value to an organization. Sometimes according to different processes in companies, identification of current processes and providing the IT team with what need to be done as requirements will be done through Business stakeholders. Even though BA will still need to dive into the business process and understand what should be optimized and what's bringing value to the organization. Because BA's should be the knowledgeable person in his/her scrum team on this regard, not the SE or QA. Because He/She should drive the development with the business intentions and alignments intact.

So BA is an important agent in improving business process. And how does he/she does that? Here comes the arsenal of BA. What will be used for this is Business Process Mapping. This is making the identified current business process visualized to the business stakeholders using a set of notations. Business Process Mapping is described in many other terms. These are flow diagrams, Cross functional diagram, Swim lane diagram, Process charts. At the end all of these comes under Business Process Maps. We use the short term for Business Process Maps as BPM. By using BPM you will be able to understand the gaps and the changes that need to be done.

There is another term called Business Process Modelling. This stands for modelling and making the process efficient, more into lean method. What we talk in Business Process Mapping is what we does to understanding the business process. Theoretically used for the current state but even can be used for the desired future state. Then there is BPMN, which is a little complex notation used for BPM. By using BPMN tools the diagram can be converted to code. Some notations are different to that of BPM here, such as the start and end points. Then there is UML activity diagram, which is also similar. But as we discussed in our earlier editions it is into object oriented programing methodology. Where users actions in use case perspective are taken.

Now as I had cleared some confusions and introduced BPM to you, lets dive in how to effectively draw a BPM. Here I will be taking a simple Doctor channeling process with cycle of channeling to meeting the doctor to taking medication from the pharmacy. And this would be done using an imaginary hospital I'm taking today, Hospital "Best in Health".

1. Identify you scope.

You should first identify the scope in which you need to draw the BPM. In this case always try to be specific. If not your BPM will be too large and will have additional scope which is irrelevant. Do not try to add this additional scope thinking that detailed view is good. Because what we try here is to understand the process, irrelevant details will make it complex. But if your scope even at its granular level is larger, then try breaking it into separate diagrams. No harm.

In my identified use case for Best in Health Hospital the stages would be 1) Calling to channel 2) Visiting doctor on appointment time 3) Doing payments 4) Doctor inspecting patient 5) Getting prescription and 6) Buying medication from the pharmacy. Even though details looks interesting, some would be out of the scope. Example would be processes such as getting prescription from the doctor and visiting Radiology or taking an X ray.

2. Identify roles.

Then you need to identify the roles. This is the exact person responsible for each action in your process flow. Always try to name the person with his exact role. If consider a Financial institute, do not add as the Finance user or Business user, but the actual person role. Such as Financial analyst, Actuary, Portfolio manager.

In our case the roles would be Patient, Channel center user, Hospital receptionist, Doctor, Pharmacist. You can add the roles in horizontal swim lanes as below,

The tool I'm being using for this is Miro. You can use Visio, Draw.io, Lucid charts or even PowerPoint for this.

3. Identify start and end.

Start of the process is the triggering point. This can be an email, a schedule or an activity. And then the other important piece to identify at the beginning of drawing the diagram is the END point. Mostly the definite outcome. In the best practices of BPM, it should only have one start and one end. First add these two important points to the diagram, then identifying the rest in between will be easy.

Below is in our case,

4. Including the steps.

Now is the time to add the process to the diagram. What's within the Start and the End. In BPM there are some specific symbols/notations that can be used. The rest are in another type such as UML or BPMN (Even though derived from BPM).

Below are the symbols,

By using the above symbols you can draw the diagram. So I had filled my process flow for "Best in Health" Hospital's need. This is a simplified diagram in the perspective of explaining, but many more conditions can be added if analyzed further. Even you can separate this into two processes 1) to Channel the Doctor and 2) to Visit hospital.

When you as the Business Analyst, who's drawing a BPM, always make sure to participate stakeholders from all the identified roles. Activity can be a workshop where you facilitate as the BA and collaborate with each stakeholder as a team to come up with the map. If not you should dig into each department by your own and get the process mapped by yourself. I would go for the fun way, the workshop.

The process you are creating can be done by a person or a system, nevertheless include all the nodes in the chain to the diagram. That's a main intention of a Business Process Map. When writing steps, the best practice would be to write steps in Verb + Noun format, in a short and sweet way.

So after the BPM being drawn, you can discuss with your business stakeholders about the optimizations that can be brought to the current process. Then can identify the pain points along each node and come up with solutions to each. This will be your software system you are going to design. So that then you can go for SRS documentation stage with further elicitation by asking from stakeholders how the software should be.

Another key point, or the most important point you will be getting out of this exercise will be how your system will smoothly mix with the current process. And to where. What would be manual? and who would do that step?, then what step would be done through the system? and by whom?. These are very important points in a solution, where through BPM in your arsenal as a Business Analyst you had just found the answers.