Daily Read #104 – Clarity in the design process: how to create a process map for your team

Quick snippets from our morning read on Tuesday, 20th April 2021

I am passionate about building productivity systems and structures. Having systems or structures in place saves a lot of headache caused by some of the most common challeneges experienced in managing teams and executing projects. Today’s morning read is an article I found particularly insightful because it addresses the aspect of productivity through building a process map for your team. With reference to the Facebook experience, Ben Blumenfeld shares great insights in this article. I have picked out a few parts of the article to share. Enjoy

Below are some ways to create a process map for your team or organization.

Elements of a process map

Process maps don’t have a prescriptive structure because they should clarify the unique steps and requirements native to your design team and company. But for illustrative purposes, your process map might use the 4 phases of Dave Merholz’s Double Diamond Model of Product Design:

1. Ideation (Understanding customer issues and thinking about product strategy)
2. Definition (Further defining the strategy and project requirements)
3. Iteration (Prototyping and testing)
4. Implementation (Fleshing out and refining the solution)

For each of those phases, you can define what must be in place before moving the product forward. Specify things like:

Put the process into practice

Here are four basic steps to creating a process map:

1. Diagnose: Here’s a great way to test it. At your next team meeting or offsite, pass a paper to everyone in the room and ask them to map out one of your core team processes on their own. Then compare. If multiple teammates try this and have very different process maps, it’s a good signal you need to meld your ideal process into one the whole team can agree upon.
2. Clarify: Rework your process as a team. Dredge up the steps and requirements, polish them off, and look at them in the light. Write down the three to five major phases of your process, and specify the people, tools & software, artifacts & deliverables, important meetings, decisions, and outcomes that go into each one.
3. Create an artifact: Then create an artifact of your agreed-upon process and distribute it within and outside of your team, whether it be a poster, spreadsheet, Google doc, or task list.
4. Circulate and iterate: Once that artifact is created, you want to use it to get feedback, iterate on your process until people feel good about it. Then think about how to communicate it to the team and codify it in your tools and resources.

You can read the full and very insightful article here.

And as always, if you enjoyed this, check out the rest of our daily snippets, curated daily, right here on The Red Notebook.