Have you ever wanted to map out a specific process or workflow
so you can easily visualize and identify areas of improvement for your business?
If so, you've come to the right place.
Hi, my name is Mason and we're taking a look at
Business Process Modeling Notation, also known as BPMN.
We'll go over some best practices when creating them in Lucidchart
and additional features that can help you improve your business processes.
Let's start with an overview.
Different from other types of process maps,
A BPMN uses specific shapes to create a standardized way
of communicating business actions across the organization.
This approach helps teams eliminate the risk of important information
being misunderstood.
Lucidchart takes these concepts even further by helping you visualize
your business's current state, identify areas of improvement,
and map out future possibilities - all within the same document.
Let me show you what I mean.
Here, you have Torrie’s Tacos, a local taco truck.
To help Torrie visualize the process of selling her tacos to taco loving
customers, I've gone ahead and mapped out the entire process for her.
Now that she can visualize each step of the business,
she can work to identify areas that may need improvement
and make plans to implement new steps in the future.
Let's walk through what building this might look like, together.
If we're looking to improve Torrie's business, we have to see
how the business is operating by building out a current state.
When starting a BPMN in Lucidchart, I'll usually recommend using a template
to save some time, but for this video we're going to start from scratch.
First, let's add the BPMN Shape Library to our Shape Toolbar for easy access.
There are four shape types for BPMN:
Flow objects - Events, Activities, Gateways;
Connecting objects - Sequence flow, Message flow, Association;
Swim lanes; and Artifacts - such as Data, Groups, and Annotations.
We aren’t going to go over those in depth here, but if you want to learn more
about these specific shapes, I recommend checking out these two resources.
Since there are going to be three people involved: Torrie the Taco Chef,
Collin the Cashier, and Morgan the Customer, we’ll want to drag out
some swim lanes
and label them to help keep information organized and show dependencies.
We'll begin with dragging over the Event shape to indicate
that it's the start of the process.
The first event to happen in the process is when Morgan, the customer,
walks up to the taco truck.
After Morgan walks up, we'll need to create a Task
that shows her viewing the menu.
A Task is an activity that is performed by a person or system within the process.
The lines you’re seeing in the process represent
which way the information is flowing in the diagram.
After considering the options on the menu,
Morgan decides she wants to order a chicken taco.
For this, we’ll need to use a Gateway because it's a decision point.
The decision being Morgan wanting a chicken taco
that can adjust the path of the process based on the conditions or events.
For the next step, we'll need to use the Contextual Panel.
The Contextual Panel houses many options for you when creating a BPMN.
There are Activities, Task Types and Activity Marker.
For this example, we're going to focus on Activity and Task Type.
Now that Morgan knows what she wants, she'll then submit her order to Torrie.
For this task to be represented in the process,
we'll need to mark the Task Type as “Send” task.
For now, Morgan has to wait for a taco to be made.
We need to add an Intermediate Event to show that Morgan is waiting.
An Intermediate Event is an event that happens anywhere
between the Start and End Event.
Switching over to Torrie's tasks, we'll start by showing
that Torrie received the order
and then go through the process of making and giving Morgan her taco.
You know what they say, “The best things in life are free.
Except Torrie's Tacos, you’ve got to pay for those.”
When Torrie gives Morgan her taco, she'll then pay.
From here, we're going to map out the transaction process for Collin.
Start by creating an Intermediate Event that indicates Collin
receiving Morgan's credit card.
After that, we're going to use a Transaction
Task to show a form of payment was exchanged.
Next, use a Group and label it “Transaction Process.”
Groups are used to organize tasks in a process that have significant value.
When the transaction process is complete, we’ll use two End Events to show this.
You'll see that the End Event
has a more solid black line in comparison to the start event.
At this point, we're feeling pretty good about our current process.
But as always, we're looking to improve our business
and that starts with recognizing the gaps in our customer experience.
Conditional Formatting
in Lucidchart not only lets us visually highlight important information,
but can also surface risk and gaps in the process.
For example, let's say that Torrie wants to highlight
the transaction process and areas where people experience longer wait times.
Navigate to conditional formatting to set up your rules.
When the rules have been set up, you can see them
appear on the diagram when toggled on and off.
If you want to learn more about conditional formatting,
click here to go through our Gain Insight With Conditional Formatting course.
Now that we can see where customers are experiencing some frustration,
we can share this with the team to get their input for improving the process.
With a simple link copied from the Share icon, we can share the document
with our team and gather everyone quickly to discuss what was found.
As we discuss potential solutions for improving the process,
we'll add notes to the different shapes to provide more context for other teams
without over cluttering the document.
If we wanted input from a specific member of the team
who might not be available at the moment, using the @ mention
to grab their focus will allow them to jump into the document
and know exactly where to look to provide feedback.
Providing that feedback to the team asynchronously can either come in the form
of responding to the comments they were tagged in,
or if more is needed to be explained, they can use a Loom video
to walk the team through the feedback and leave it in the diagram
for anyone to access at any time.
After reviewing the current state, we uncovered an opportunity
to make the customer experience better by adding a new greeting task
after the customer comes up to the taco truck.
Before implementing that change, we’ll want to make sure we understand how
it will impact the rest of the experience by building off our current state
and create a potential future state within the same document.
If the changes we were making were more complex
and affect multiple areas of the business,
we'd lean into using Actions and Pages to build the diagram further.
Since this adjustment is minor,
layers are a better fit for implementing incremental changes.
Something I like to do when creating my future state, is adding
color to the new changes to distinguish different tasks or sub-processes.
This will make it easier for the viewer to see what changes are proposed
and we can make sure that Morgan gets the taco she deserves.
Once the new task is created, highlight the future state and right click.
Find “Move to Layer” and select “New Layer.”
Name the new layer “Future State” and you can adjust
the visibility of the layer by clicking the Eye icon.
Hold up! Where did the shapes go?
You can create a button in Lucidchart
that will toggle between your current state and future state.
Pick a shape from the Shape Toolbar, add color to make it stand out, and label it.
Select the new button and navigate to actions.
After clicking, navigate to the layers option and find the toggle dropdown.
Select the layer you’ve created and go to your new button to toggle the layer on.
Pretty cool, right?
You now have a BPMN diagram that can act as a blueprint.
Make sure that your team can reference it with ease as they build new processes
by saving it in the Lucid Suites team
folders or integrations like Confluence and Google Drive.
When you want to make improvements
to how your business is currently running things, try out a BPMN.
Now you know how to analyze where you're at, collaborate with peers to find ways
to improve, and then prototype a future state where it's fixed.
To learn more about BPMNs or other diagraming solutions in Lucidchart,
check out training.lucid.co We'll catch you next time!