Documentation of processes

Process is a sequence of activities that aim to create some result. In case of business process the result may be goods or services for an internal or external customer. We can look at the whole organization as a set of processes and activities that connect each other.

When it comes to processes it is good have two things in mind:

1. Processes run across organization units.
2.  Processes run no matter if we manage them or not or if we are aware of them.

In order company achieves its goals, processes should be managed in an effective and efficient way.

Processes and their set up in the company is subject of a number of norms e.g. ISO 9000 Quality management system, ISO 20000 IT service management and other. Even if you have implemented such a system in your company you may come across situations when a certain process is described just with few sentences and the real process is much more complex, involves more teams and is not documented.

If you want to ensure transparency and improve processes, it is always good to document them and also describe in a graphic way. This will facilitate understanding of the process by people that participate in the process, by those who care about process effectiveness and efficiency and by those who are responsible for the process. Transparency is a prerequisite for process improvement.

There is no need to document the process with a complex tool that can be viewed as number one among proces software but work with it is complicated and outputs are not understandable to most of people. Even big organizations draw processes in a simple software like MS Visio or similar tools that are often free and sometimes do not need installing (you need just a browser). It is better to use simple tools and maintain the processes up to date, well described and the description available to everybody than complex software that people do not work with.

In the process we should clarify:

• Roles acting in the process
• Activities that are performed
• Rules that need to be maintained
• Applications and tools that are used in particular steps
• Metrics that will verify whether the process performs well

Verbal description of the process should be supplemented by the process flow scheme. In majority of cases just few symbols will do - process start, activity, decision, process end.

Example: Below scheme describes process of a purchase request approval.

Process can be documented in MS Word, but it is much better to publish it also in a Knowledge base. This will make the process accessible to everybody in much easier way. It can be searched and we can connect it by means of URL links to other processes.