Hello All,
My manager is asking one of our IT guys if he could put together a workflow diagram for new mail & new claims (we're an insurance company) received by our office . I'm interested in taking a stab at putting these diagrams together, as the IT guy is out for a few days. Our office operates in a paperless enviroment so new mail received is scanned in manually to a mail workflow where it then needs to be manually indexed into it's assigned file. During the indexing step the processor reviews the document and enters the file number to send the piece of correspondence to. Once the piece of mail is indexed it is sent to the file handler as a task attached to their paperless file.
Can anyone reccommend a tempalte on modernanalyst or any other site that I can use to guide me in creating this diagram. I'd really appreciate the help!
You have just explained the process to us using a technique called 'user story' or scenairo. The syntax may not follow the pundents - but you have described it well just the same. Now all you hae to do is retell that same story using squares, which represent activities and dimonds -they represent decisions.
Do you know MS Visio? If you office does not have a lic for it there are a number of free diagraming tools out there. See if you have visio then report back and we will go from there.
Perry
Hello Perry and thank you for you're response. To answer your question....I have Visio 2000 installed on my PC. Is that different from the version of Visio that you mentioned?
Its a little old but will get the job done. if you are new to diagraming then I would suggest writing out the main scenario in words first using short declarative active voice present tence sentences. Here is an example for making a cup of coffee with a Kurig machine.
I made an important error in this flow - can you see it? Look at step 8. Where did that cup come from. It is very easy to leave out things. If I had run this case then my coffee whould be all over the counter and the process would have failed. This is why it helps to write it out first. Try to limit your steps to between 7-12.
Once you are happy you have it, open Visio and open a plain process diagram. Take a look at the icons and get familuar with them. You will only need the squares, dimonds and a start and end. Pull them onto the template area and begin to transpose what you wrote- keep the statements as short as possible. Once that is done connect the boxes to show the order of flow. if there is more than one departemt involved it gets more complicated, as you will have to add swimlanes.
Once you have completed the diagram take a look for exceptions that are important enough to document. An exception is when something unexpected happens and it needs to be delt with, in some way. In my coffee example, the process asks for filtered water. If filtered water is not there we can use tap water but at a risk as it tends to gum up the machine with deposits. Exceptions that carry risk must be identified and delt with should they come up.
So take a stab at it and if you have any issues let us know. Visio is an easy tool to use.
All that typing - Im getting myself a coffee in my Kurig.
Hello again Perry,
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question in detail. I attached a copy of the finished product. If you have any advice or reccomendations please feel free to let me know.
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