How to run a process mapping workshop

24th July 2024

by Chris Green

Learning how to run a process mapping workshop is a great way to quickly capture, understand and improve processes. It brings people together, aligns them and provides a fantastic opportunity to generate new ideas.

But if you’ve never run, or facilitated, a process mapping workshop before, it may feel daunting. Want to learn more? In this guide we explain how to run a successful process mapping workshop.

Before you start

Choose your approach

Process mapping workshops are brilliant for generating conversations and collaboration. But they shouldn’t be unstructured. You need to guide the conversation to ensure you get the desired outcome.

For this, you need a process framework or notation that’ is easy to use and guides the conversation. There are lots of approaches available that you can read about in our process mapping guide.

“Workshops help introduce people to planned change and make them feel part of it. By bringing them along on the journey, you are more likely to gain future support and engagement in your change or continuous improvement initiatives. “

Chris Green

Commercial Director – Liberty Spark, Netcall

Liberty Spark, our process improvement tool, uses UPN – Universal Process Notation. This approach uses a box that describes the key steps and who does them, and a box that tells you when the activity starts and finishes. It’s straightforward, clear and very effective.

We really like this because it’s very simple to use and understand. It means that everyone in the workshop can engage straightaway and you don’t need to be an expert in process mapping to get involved!

In any case, we recommend keeping it simple while asking the important questions. What, why, how, who and when.

Practice with this before you start. By keeping it simple, this type of process mapping will come naturally to you and your participants.

Agree the title, scope and participants

Don’t try to do too much at once so that your process mapping workshops aren’t too long. Think carefully about which process you’re going to map – consider where does it start and end?. This is your scope and it will help you determine who needs to be involved.

If necessary, you can break a large process down into smaller pieces.

Set the agenda and objectives

We have written about process mapping workshop agendas, at the very least, you need to set the duration, objectives of the workshop and set time aside for introductions and wrap up.

Share the agenda with your participants early and remind them before the workshop.

Make sure everything is set up

There’s nothing worse than arriving for a process mapping workshop and waiting for the facilitator to set up the screen, flipcharts, handouts, etc. Arrive early, even the day before, and make sure everything is working and ready to go.

During the workshop

Snacks and refreshments

Depending on how long your process mapping workshops are, you should consider providing refreshments. Even providing water, tea and coffee can help participants to relax and show that you are considerate of their situation. They will be busy and may not have time to take regular refreshment breaks, so you’re offering them a safe environment.

Introductions

Start your process mapping workshop with introductions, including personal introductions for any participants that are not familiar with each other. Restate the objectives to make sure everyone is aligned and in the right room!

Review the agenda and spend some time explaining the basics of the approach and how it’s going to work. We also recommend setting some ground rules such as; set phones to silent, one person talks at a time, what gets said in the room stays in the room, park unresolved discussions after 5 minutes. These are basic suggestions  you can add your own. The objective here is to make everyone feel comfortable.

Follow the methodology

Now it’s time to start the work your process mapping workshop was intended for. Capture the process following your chosen methodology.

As soon as a group starts talking about their processes, they’ll immediately identify issues in how they work and make suggestions for improving. Sometimes there are unanswered questions or quick wins that the team can action immediately. Try to capture these things as you go.

Use a flip chart or whiteboard to capture issues, opportunities and actions and then write them up afterward. Or if you are using software to map your processes, capture these items directly against the relevant steps in the process, so that you can report on and share them later.

Wrap up and assign actions

Before you let anyone leave the room, make sure you review all the actions and assign them. Agree to follow up so everyone can keep track of their actions and when they are completed, or the outcome of each one.

It’s definitely worth reviewing the objectives of the workshop. Did you meet them, or will you need further sessions and research to close it off?

This workshop may be part of a wider piece of work so make sure your participants have access to the plan and understand how this fits together.

After the process mapping workshop

Share the content

At the end of a workshops participants will feel a sense of achievement. They will have had a chance to get things off their chests and learnt things about their colleagues that they didn’t previously know.

But remember that you were there to capture and understand a process. So, make sure you share the content with them, along with any other information that was generated.

Many people need time to digest the discussion, so, they often come up with more ideas and feedback after the session. Make sure there is a way for them to easily feed that back into the map you have created.

This could be by email, or if you’re using Liberty Spark, our process improvement tool, you can capture the feedback against the process.

Keep participants up to date with progress

Where this workshop was part of a wider project, it’s important to keep participants up to date on the progress of the project and how this work contributed. There will undoubtedly be a time in the future when you will need to invite them to more workshops. So, it’s essential that they feel their time was well spent and led to improvements.

Put what you’ve learned into action

Finally, you ran this workshop for a reason. Feed what you’ve learned back to the project team to ensure that opportunities are acted upon and that the benefits are realised.

How to run a process mapping workshop

In this article you have learned how to run a process mapping workshop successfully. The key steps should remain the same whenever you do this, but the tools you use can make all the difference.

Spark was designed specifically to be used in live process mapping workshops, to map processes at the speed of conversation. This means:

• You no longer need to write up notes after the workshop
• You can map and share processes there and then
• You can get sign off and agreement from your stakeholders in the workshop
• You don’t lose time chasing after them once the workshop has finished
• You can also capture all your risks, issues, ideas and other information against the process
• You’ll have one place to store, manage and share the information. Spark will even provide instant insights through built in analytics
• You get a living breathing document that is easy to update, engaging and that everyone in your organisation can read and understand

Want to find out more? Get in touch with the team to discover how Liberty Spark can improve process mapping workshops for you.