How to run a process mapping workshop

Why should you run workshops?

Workshops are one of the best ways to understand how a team is currently working and collaboratively work together to get to an agreed outcome. Process mapping is primarily done in a workshop setting; the Engage Process Modeler allows for a trained user to process map live in a workshop, enabling stakeholders to see and contribute to the process map being created.

Workshops have a few key advantages. Firstly, workshops pull together a wide range of stakeholders, allowing for a wide and complete view of the area under investigation. This allows for a complete understanding of the issues and problems. Secondly, workshops help increase the speed and productivity of a project or team. It is quicker and more productive to have one workshop instead of many separate meetings and interviews. Allowing all relevant stakeholders into a workshop helps to gain a consensus and agreement on the processes and decisions made in the workshop.

However, these advantages can only be realised if the workshop is run correctly. Therefore, there are several disadvantages to workshops that need to be considered to ensure that the workshop is productive.

Firstly, it is essential to get the right people in the room. It can take time and cause delay to find a window of time where all stakeholders are free. Therefore, the workshop may not be able to accommodate all of the stakeholders required, leaving some gaps in knowledge. Secondly, a workshop requires a good workshop facilitator. Otherwise, a dominant voice can speak for the room and make decisions for others or without the approval of the whole room. The workshop facilitator must make sure that all voices are heard and held equally. Finally, it can be challenging to ensure that the stakeholders and participants have the required authority to propose or approve changes.

Preparing for a workshop

As discussed in the previous section, the success or failure of a workshop is highly dependent on how it is run. Therefore, the planning and preparation of a workshop are vital to its success. There are five critical steps of preparation required before a workshop can start.

• The objective of the workshop.
• The participants of the workshop
• The interests of each participant
• The structure of the workshop
• Finding an appropriate venue

Firstly, the workshop has to have an objective that can be reasonably achieved within the workshop and capable of achieving with the people in the room. Especially in a process mapping workshop, this may be split into objectives for several sessions across several days. For example, the first objective could be to process map the current ‘As-Is’ process, with a later objective to map the ‘To-Be’ processes.

It is crucial to ensure that the correct people are in the room. All stakeholders interested in the objective should be invited to attend or be represented. A process mapping workshop may follow an agile team structure where attendees make up the Solution Development Team. More information about Agile teams can be found in this previous blog, “Why an Agile Team is necessary for a process improvement project”.

Finally, a suitable venue needs to be arranged. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, this has been successfully achieved through digital means like Zoom and Teams. Otherwise, a neutral venue should be used, which is away and out of earshot from other team members, mainly if sensitive objectives are discussed.

Facilitating a workshop

Now that the workshop has been planned, the workshop facilitator should discuss the objectives and work to get the patients buy-in. This can be achieved by letting the business sponsor open the workshop to outline the importance of the project.

A key role of the workshop facilitator is to set the pacing of the meeting. It is important that all objectives set out in the planning phase are covered and given appropriate time for discussion. It is also important to ensure that everyone is contributing and that everyone is contributing equally without one person or a group speaking for the majority.

Throughout this discussion, a record needs to be kept of the key points such as decisions or issues for future workshops. It is usually more effective to set someone other than the workshop facilitator as the ‘scribe’ so they can focus fully on running the workshop.

At the end of the workshop, the facilitator needs to summarise the key points and actions. Each action should be assigned to an owner and allocated a timescale for completion.

Workshop techniques

There are two types of workshop techniques that are commonly used, techniques for discovery and techniques for documentation. Discovery techniques enable the facilitator to gather information and views from the attendees. Picking the correct technique is vital to the situation and context of the objective set out. Some of which include:

• Brainstorming – participants call out ideas on a given topic which are collated either on a whiteboard or flipchart or on digital software like Miro or Engage Process. Once all of the information has been added to the brainstorm, it can be sorted into groups or priorities.
• Round-robin discussion – participants are asked for their ideas in turn.
• Brainwriting – participants write down ideas that are then collated and grouped.
• Stepwise refinement – asks a question to the group and continually asks ‘Why?’ to every answer given to get to the root of the problem, idea or situation.

Once the information had been surfaced using the discovery techniques, it needs to be effectively collated using the documentation techniques. This may include process models, data models, use case diagrams, rich pictures and process maps. During a process mapping workshop, the main output of the workshop would be the completed process maps. Using a digital tool such as the Engage Process Modeler allows the facilitator to process map live in the workshop so that the participants can see the map being built, leading to a more accurate map.

Collecting the output of a workshop

The outputs of the workshop should be sent to all participants and stakeholders as soon as possible after the workshop. This may require a write up of the documentation techniques such as transferring paper process maps to a digital tool. If process maps were originally created using the Engage Process Modeler, the process maps can be digitally shared to all involved immediately after the workshop ends where the maps can be viewed and commented on.