Mapping Process Responsibilities

Choose a starting condition and an identifiable output. State the person or function receiving that output and the requirement it must meet.

Avoid beginning with the organizational chart. A process can cross several departments, and its most consequential decisions may occur at the handoffs between them.

Walk through a representative request, order, change or investigation. Record inputs, actions, decisions and outputs in the order they occur.

Ask participants where the documented procedure differs from practice. A workaround may be evidence of a poorly designed interface rather than a person's unwillingness to follow a rule.

For each step, identify who performs the work and who can make the decision. These may be different roles.

Specify authority for accepting an output, resolving an exception, changing a requirement and releasing work after a problem. “The team” is not an adequate answer when no one knows who can decide.

A control needs an object, a requirement, a method and a response. “Check quality” leaves all four uncertain.

For illustration, a document-release control might identify the document edition, required approval, release record and action taken if approval is absent. The example describes a control structure; the particular approval authority must come from the organization's own arrangements.

At each handoff, ask what the receiver needs, how completion is known and how missing information is returned. Examine queues, duplicate entry, conflicting versions and decisions that lack an owner.

Record the evidence used to identify a handoff problem. A complaint about delay is a starting point; understanding the delay may require examining arrival patterns, priorities and rework.

Choose measures that help assess the process's intended outcome. Interpret a measure with its definition, source and operating conditions.

An apparent improvement in elapsed time may reflect a change in work mix or the exclusion of incomplete cases. Compare like conditions before attributing the change to an action.

Have the participants examine the map and unresolved issues. Assign responsibility for changes and a way to assess their effect. Update the map when responsibilities or operating arrangements change.

A quality management system connects organizational processes, responsibilities and information. ASQ's overview provides further context for this system perspective. ASQ: Quality Management Systems.

Read Quality Systems and Evidence & Decisions. A process map supports understanding; it does not independently establish that a system is effective or certified.