Questions to be asked
For each process, at least the following questions have to be answered:
- What is the desired outcome of the process?
- What are the start and end points?
- What activities are performed?
- What is the order of the activities?
- Who performs the activities?
- What information is required (documents)?
- How often is this process done?
- What is the importance of the process?
Take the example of your sales process. What is the start point for your sales orders? Customers pick up the phone, call you, and tell you exactly which items they want in what quantities. Or maybe you receive the orders by e-mail, or customers submit them in a website, or the order is submitted through EDI, or maybe your salesperson visits your customers and gets the sales order, or the customers ask you for sales quotes that finally get accepted (and thus converted into a sales order) or rejected, or you have blanket sales orders for a certain period of time and you do not receive any further sales orders...
