Situation: There are gobs of flowcharts. So many that people roll their eyes at the mere mention of them. At first, I thought they reproduced at night when all the lights were off. Sort of like cockroaches. Despite folks’ pleas to management to stop producing them, they are continuously created.
Goal: Because management thinks people are merely confused by the flowcharts, they want to develop a process document that explains at a high level what they do. From there, they can add support documentation on “work practices” (don’t say procedures in the office, it’s comparable to saying bomb in the airport). Everything would be in easy-to-find, connected, textual presentations to alleviate the reliance on people grasping a bunch of willy-nilly flowcharts.
Nine months later and the umpteenth dance around the goal: Manager sends my first draft of process doc to Director for opinion.
Result: Director sends reply email to Manager:
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From: Director
To: Manager
Cc: Senior Manager
RE: Processes_All_Phases.doc
I did a quick read, looks pretty good. One thought: Might be easy to get lost in the process. I wonder if a high level flowchart (with brief descriptions of what the process is and why it’s done) would help?
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