How to Create Your Own Business Process VidMaps - Part 3
Posted October 5th, 2008 by Jason Nethercott

Welcome back to Part 3 in this series of ‘how to’ articles on the basic steps to creating your own Business Process Video Maps or VidMaps for short. If you haven’t yet seen Part 1 or Part 2 it would pay to review those lessons before starting on this one as I have written the lessons sequentially with each building on the previous.

In Lesson one we learned about some software tools that enable us to map and video record our business processes and procedures and the most common business process mapping symbols. In Lesson two we learned about three different kinds of process or work-flow maps and gained an understanding of some important process mapping conventions.

By the end of this lesson you will:

Have completed your first Functional-Activity process map
Gained an understanding of using Visio for the creation of process maps for your business
Have laid the platform for the creation of procedure videos

So let’s get down to it. Open-up Visio or your process mapping software of choice and open up a new file. To start with it is best to use a template and here I have selected the ’Basic Cross Functional Flowchart’ template. Your page (I will assume you are using Visio 7), should look like Figure 1.

Figure 1

It is important that you provide a descriptive name for your process that uses a verb such as: ‘Uploading a video to You Tube’ or ‘Creating a new customer file’. Also name each function, role or area of your business that has a hand in performing the process for example, ’sales’, ‘administration’ or ‘receptionist’. Each functional band or section in a process map is called a ’swim lane’ and makes it easy to see the tasks performed.

Once you have set-up the basic structure for your map it’s time to start placing the various different shapes on the map that describe each element in the process. Use verb-noun combinations to describe the activities and questions to describe the decision diamonds. Number each box and diamond and stay in sequence as the process flows. At times this can be difficult with parallel activities but don’t worry about that too much at this stage.

The process I have chosen to map is creating a VidMap and I have purposely kept it simple so as not to cause confusion. To add process shapes to the map simply click on your chosen shape from the ’shape’ pane on the left and drag it onto the map. Connect each shape in sequence by using Visio’s ’connector tool’
to create a solid line ending in an arrow to show the flow. A broken or dotted line shows a connection to software or other tools used in the process. Figure 2 shows the completed basic VidMap process from start to finish.

Figure 2

As you can see, the Functional-Activity map that I have created doesn’t show ‘how’ to perform each step which stops us from getting too caught-up in the details. Instead we have a ‘birds eye view’ of the end-to-end process and an understanding of the number of steps, functions and/or people involved.

So that’s enough for lesson three and you should now be able to create your first process map. In lesson four we will use Camtasia Studio to record the detailed procedures found in each task or activity so that someone completely new to the process can easily learn how to do it.

Action steps:

If you haven’t already, download & play around with Visio and Camtasia and explore what the software can do
Practise mapping your process in Visio until you are happy that you have captured all the major tasks and activities
Think about the detailed procedures used to complete each task and activity in your new process map

Thanks greatly for reading and you are now ready to dive into procedure video which adds a new dimension to process documentation and learning. See you in Lesson four!

Jason