Understanding and capturing the current state “as-is”

To understand business needs, you need to understand how they are operated. What is the current process, regardless of whether you have it documented or not?

Let us start with a clean slate, assuming we do not have any existing artifacts. Each user knows their tasks and the process related to the task very well, but they do not have the bigger picture – that is, how other users do their tasks or how all related tasks are interlinked.

So, where do we start? The process of documenting any process appears to be complex and confusing and you may not know where to start. The simplest way is to get the right set of people and start drawing the process on a whiteboard or a flip chart. At this juncture, do not worry about what tool to use and what technique you need – just start drawing it. You need multiple iterations before you can get a good process flow that is well understood and approved by all stakeholders...