Many organizations are structured in departments and units. But users do not see departments; they see a single journey that starts with their request and ends when they receive the service. That is the essence of the process approach.
What is a process?
A process is a set of interrelated activities that uses inputs to deliver an intended result. Receiving a request, reviewing it and responding is one process, which may cross several departments.
This definition comes from ISO 9000, which adds that the activities may be interrelated or interacting. The outputs of one process are often the inputs of another, so processes form a network that is, in fact, the management system itself.
A process should not be confused with a procedure. The process is what actually happens to turn inputs into outputs; the procedure is the specified way to carry out an activity or a process, and it may or may not be documented.
Processes are usually classified into three families: core processes, which directly produce what users receive, such as delivering the service or making the product; support processes, which provide what core processes need, such as human resources, maintenance or purchasing; and management processes, which steer the organization and monitor its performance, such as strategic planning or management review.
Why a process approach?
- It reveals the interfaces between departments, where responsibilities get lost and delays build up.
- It links each activity to the value it adds for the user.
- It makes end-to-end performance easier to measure.
ISO 9001 sums up the benefits of this approach as understanding requirements and meeting them consistently, considering processes in terms of added value, achieving effective process performance, and improving processes on the basis of the evaluation of data and information. The standard also asks organizations to determine, for each process, its inputs and outputs, its sequence and interaction with other processes, its operating criteria and indicators, its resources, the responsibilities and authorities involved, and the related risks and opportunities.
Two description tools: SIPOC and the turtle diagram
SIPOC is a simple way to describe any process on one page:
- Suppliers (S): who provides the inputs?
- Inputs (I): what do we need?
- Process (P): what are the main steps?
- Outputs (O): what do we produce?
- Customers (C): who receives it?
SIPOC is generally used to draw the big picture before going into detail, which is why its process column is limited to a handful of main steps.
The turtle diagram describes a single process in more depth. The process sits in the middle, surrounded by six elements: inputs, outputs, physical resources (with what?), people and their competence (with whom?), methods and procedures (how?), and indicators (measured how?). Auditors often use it to understand a process before auditing it.
A worked example: transcripts in a university faculty
In a university faculty, students complain about delays in receiving their transcripts. Each party sees its role in isolation: lecturers submit marks, departments compile them and the student records office prints the transcripts. Applying SIPOC clarifies the picture: the suppliers are lecturers and academic departments; the inputs are validated marks and the minutes of the examination boards; the process covers compiling, checking, entering, printing and signing; the output is an accurate transcript; and the customers are the students. Mapping the process shows that delays build up at the hand-over of examination-board minutes between departments and the records office, a point for which no one was clearly responsible. A process owner is therefore appointed, the two parties agree on hand-over deadlines, and a simple indicator is tracked: the time taken to deliver a transcript. The number of transcripts reissued because of errors is tracked as well, so that speed is not gained at the expense of accuracy.
Practical steps
- Identify the organization’s main processes and classify them: core processes serving users, support processes and management processes.
- Map each process with its steps and decision points.
- Appoint an owner for each process to monitor its performance and lead its improvement.
- Define indicators for each process: time, quality, cost and user satisfaction.
- Review the interactions between processes regularly.
- Apply the PDCA cycle to each process, taking account of the risks and opportunities linked to it.
It is useful to start with a high-level map showing the main processes and their links on a single page, and then to detail the priority processes, rather than trying to map everything at once.
When everyone knows where their role starts and ends, and who receives their output, coordination improves on its own.
Common mistakes
- Confusing processes with the organization chart, so that each department is mapped instead of each flow.
- Going into so much detail that the maps become documents no one reads.
- Appointing a process owner without the authority needed to coordinate across departments.
- Measuring each department’s performance separately while neglecting end-to-end measurement.
- Drawing the maps once and never updating them when the work changes.
