Process mapping is your best friend when it comes to building business systems. But with multiple processes in place, you may not know where or how to begin. It’s like reorganizing your home for spring cleaning. 🧹
In this post, we’ll show you how to process map on a simple whiteboard. That’s right! No fancy gadgets or gizmos. That can come later!
For now, we’ll focus on breaking down steps in a single process–all of which you can do within 10 minutes. ⏰
Grab a marker and whiteboard, and let’s dive into some process mapping basics. You can watch the entire tutorial or create a process map using the blog below!
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Process Mapping Basics FAQ
What Is Process Mapping?
Process mapping includes recording workflows and processes inside your business. Think of it as a blueprint outlining a sequence of steps in a process. 🗺️
Common Types of Process Maps
There’s a range of process maps, from flowcharts and swimlane maps to SIPOC diagrams and value stream maps.
For the process mapping example in this post, we will focus on a flowchart with a high-level overview.
🧭 Flowchart: A flowchart is a simplified version of a process map, using icons to represent a sequence of events.
🧭 Swimlane map: Swimlane maps branch off from workflows, display transitions between employees, and indicate areas of focus.
🧭 SIPOC diagram: SIPOC stands for systems, inputs, processes, outputs, customers. While these types of process maps are overviews, they detail complex processes in your company.
🧭 Value stream maps: Value stream maps focus on processes with inputs and outputs that directly impact your clients. Essentially, they can encompass anything that goes into the final product.
Why Process Mapping Is Important
Process mapping allows you to free up brain power by writing down all the stages of your processes in one place. When you can see your process visually, you can analyze it, assess its efficiency, and brainstorm new ways to support your team better. 👀
Whether the process map is for producing merchandise or publishing a YouTube video, it is a visual reminder of what must occur to achieve the final result.
Some benefits of process mapping include:
✅ Improving your processes and pipelines
✅ Documenting how you do what you do
✅ Minimizing work mistakes and maintaining consistent value
✅ Supporting change management
✅ Seamlessly transferring knowledge to your team
3 Tips for Designing Process Maps
- Make it a shared responsibility with your team members. The last thing you want is to be the sole owner of every process in your business. Let’s avoid potential bottlenecks by delegating ownership.
- Keep your process maps simple and concise. There will be more opportunities to add more details. Hello, SOPs and Wikis! 👋 But for now, focus on recording the current steps involved with a process.
- Stay consistent with your process maps. Use the same process mapping symbols and icons in your diagrams. We’ll provide a process mapping key in the next section. 👇
Process Mapping Symbols (00:35)
🏃♀️ Rectangles symbolize an action or step.
💭 Diamonds represent a decision point, determining multiple paths you can take during a process.
➡️ Arrows indicate the flow of the process map.
⭕ Ovals are your starting and ending points. They’re like bookends to a process.
🧲 For delays, use a half-circle icon to indicate a waiting period.
📁 The final symbol looks like a picture frame and signifies a predefined process, aka an area that branches off into an additional process.
🖼️ Why is a predefined process icon helpful? You may run out of space using a whiteboard like Layla in the video. Leaving a footnote reminds you to revisit it in the future.
Process Mapping Basics: Whiteboard Visual (02:28)
If you’re taking one of our programs, you’ll likely start with a Process Org Chart™.
A Process Org Chart™ defines what your business does and all the moving parts involved. Once you have this foundational diagram, you can begin systemizing.
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Interested in learning more about our Process Org Chart™? You can find it in our free training.
Narrow Your Scope: Beginning Process Mapping Steps
First, establish the starting and ending points of the process. This process mapping exercise will focus on the sales to onboarding process.
📍 Starting point: Book a Call
🏁 Ending point: Project Created
You’ll add measurable and delegable actions between these two points.
Keep the process map broad as you go through the actions in the sequence, like book a sales call and send proposals.
The objective isn’t to describe every detail but to share a high-level view of what’s happening in the process.
✅ Good: A good step in this process may be “Attend the sales call.”
❌ Bad: “Say hi on the call, establish rapport, ask questions.” You don’t need a play-by-play breakdown for this type of process map.
Create observable actions that will take about one work session (about 20-90 minutes).
With a scope and name, you’re ready to fill in the remaining blank spaces.
Process Mapping Techniques
Pair a verb and objective together when adding an action item (rectangle) to your process map. For example, “create proposals” and “send welcome email.”
For our detail-oriented friends, add a bullet point describing who does what beside each step. ✍
While going through this exercise, ask yourself: What happens next?
Book Call > Send Confirmation Email > Conduct Sales Call > Now what? 💭
Depending on how the sales call goes, you may end up at a decision point (diamond). Consider a question that will help direct the flow of the process map.
For instance, is this person a good fit? If the answer is “yes,” what’s the path moving forward? If not, think about the next steps.
📝 Quick note: “Yes” and “No” are common paths following a decision point. However, you don’t have to follow this guideline. Ultimately, you want questions that are mutually exclusive and have no overlap. 🙅♀️
Continue from the decision point with your preferred path and revisit the deviation path later.
What Are the Steps to Process Mapping: Double Check the Diagram
After completing the process map, review the steps and make sure they’re correct. Use these questions as guidance:
🤔 Do all the steps connect to the endpoint in some way?
🤔 Do your decision points have mutually exclusive paths, and are they labeled?
From there, ask yourself if you or your clients do anything that’s not reflected on the diagram. Fill in the missing pieces. 🧩
🧠 Keep in mind: It doesn’t have to be a beautiful visual to be effective. The purpose is to get the process out of your head.
Identify any areas where you want to dive deeper. You can write down predefined processes for future process mapping sessions.
Then, take a picture of your process map with the starting and ending points in view. 📸
Beyond Process Mapping Basics
Now that you know how to process map, rinse and repeat this exercise for as many processes as you’d like.
After clarifying what your business does, you can focus on the purpose and who is responsible for each action item.
You can also specify the frequency of the activities. For example, shipping orders every Tuesday and Thursday. Most processes will have seasonal triggers or prompts from outside events.
🗝️ Key component: The biggest game changer is documenting your process. A clear blueprint for your processes will make your team’s lives much easier because they don’t need to memorize anything. Plus, it’s easier to redelegate if required!
📢 Signature program shoutout: We cover this entire framework (and a whole lot more) in ProcessDriven Foundations™. Check it out and prepare to systemize away!
Process Map Template: A Visual Guide for Your Processes
Process mapping is only the beginning. When you define your processes, you can empower your team to take ownership of areas inside your business. Then, all you need to do is share feedback and watch as your systems improve. 👐
At ProcessDriven, we have a library of free knowledge, courses, and programs to help small teams like you turn chaos into process. Consider using us as a resource to support you on your system-building journey:
And there’s more cool stuff where that comes from.
Let’s map it out and enjoy the process!
ProcessDriven helps small teams turn chaos into process. The ProcessDriven Approach™ combines software expertise with practical process-first strategies that have helped 2,020+ teams build a scalable foundation of business systems.
