Today, everything is a project with more and more people finding themselves in a project management role of some type.  You don’t have to have the title of Project Manager to manage projects.

A Project is a temporary collection of related tasks to achieve a desired and usually unique result.

What do you think? Do you find yourself managing a collection of related tasks to achieve a desired result?  If so, you qualify as a project manager.  Businesses today are evolving, downsizing, and pushing more work down the organization chart.  You may be a project manager and not know it.  But what if you haven’t been trained as a Project Manager with the necessary skill and tool sets?

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In our series on process maps which wraps up next week, the maps we have looked at are descriptive. They help us capture and display information about the current state.  Each map depicts the entire process, though from different angles.  For example, swim lane maps stress roles, responsibilities, and hand-off points, whereas document maps list documents and records generated throughout a process.

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Over the last four weeks, we have focused our discussion on process maps. We’ve tried to answer some of the most common questions about process maps by taking a look at seven different types of process maps and how they’re used to describe processes.  A process is a structured set of activities that transforms inputs into outputs, but the way we describe a process may vary dramatically, from a text-based procedure to different forms of process maps.

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In the previous article, we discussed Document Maps, and Activity or Value Stream Maps. Today, we will review Work Flow Diagrams and Rendered Process Maps.

Work Flow Diagram

Work flow diagrams translate abstract UML, or Unified Modeling Language, symbols of squares and diamonds into graphical images, which are used to tell a more complete story than engineering notation communicates.  Engineers are used to thinking conceptually and using symbols, but the workers in the field may need something less abstract and more concrete.  Task-level communications require more clarity and work much better when we get closer to reality.

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Last week, we discussed three types of Process Maps: High-Level, Low-Level and Cross Functional or “Swim Lanes” Maps.  This week we will take a closer look at Document Maps, and Activity or Value Stream Maps.

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Last week, we established how important process maps are in developing policies and procedures.  In the course of this series, we will present seven types of process maps. This week we will discuss three types: High-Level, Low-Level, and Cross Functional or “Swim Lanes” Maps.

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You have probably heard of the term “Process Map” or a process flow chart (the terms process map and process flow chart are used interchangeably) to describe a process. But what exactly is a process map anyway? Are there different types of process maps? Are all process maps created equal? We’ll try to answer some of these questions by taking a look at seven different types of process maps and how they are used to describe a process. After all, the foundation of all businesses is a common set of core processes.

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Part 3 of a four-Part Series

Our topic of discussion in the previous article was Information Deployment. This week we will discuss Business Process Management. Corporate strategy changes over time but always requires

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