 in every organization that can significantly improve the way you understand and carry out tasks within your company. By visually outlining your workflows, you can see not only how things are currently done, but also identify opportunities for making your processes more efficient and effective.

And with a process mapping tool like ShiftX, this becomes not just a task but an interactive experience that can involve your entire team and even your stakeholders. Let's walk you through the steps to create a process map that can transform your workflow.

The first step in process mapping is to establish clear goals. What do you want to achieve with your process map? You may want to comply with new regulations, identify potential risks, or improve collaboration between different departments.

Knowing your objectives from the start helps you use process mapping tools more effectively, ensuring each part of your process map has a clear purpose.

In any process, there are individuals or teams who take action. These are your 'actors'. When mapping your process, it's crucial to identify these roles accurately.

This is not just about listing all roles but understanding their impact and contributions to the workflow. It helps in recognizing areas where roles may overlap or where additional resources might be beneficial.

This stage is crucial for developing an effective process map. It allows you to see the bigger picture of how each role interact, leading to a more efficient and well-structured process.

Now, it's time to break down the process into steps. This part is more than just listing what needs to be done, it's about understanding the sequence and how each step leads to the next.

Think of it as drawing a map that someone else can follow without getting lost.

Your goal is to make a process map that's easy to use and helps make the workflow smoother and more efficient. When you're done, you should have a clear guide that explains the whole process in a straightforward way.

The next step in making your process map is to assign roles to each step. This means making it clear which role is responsible for what in each part of the process.

It's about organizing who does what, so there's no confusion later on. Adding roles to each step has big benefits:

 Everyone knows who's in charge of each task. This stops tasks from being missed or done twice.

 When people know their specific roles, they're more likely to take ownership and do their best.

 It's easier to see if a step is missing someone or if one role is doing too much.

Integrating roles into each step of your process map is crucial for creating a well-structured and transparent process. This helps keep everything running smoothly and makes sure everyone knows their part.

After mapping your process, share it with your co-workers. 

 will be a good test of its clarity. They may spot issues or suggest additional steps that you hadn't considered. Be open to their feedback, a fresh set of eyes can be invaluable.

Remember, the goal of sharing the process map with your team is not just to inform them but to engage them. Their input is invaluable, providing a perspectives that can significantly enhance the quality of your process map. Encourage open dialogue and be ready to make adjustments based on their feedback.

For each actor in your process, describe their role and actions in detail. This helps avoid misunderstandings later on. Everyone involved should be able to look at the process map and know exactly what's expected of them and others.

Some steps in your process will be riskier than others. Highlight these areas and assign someone to monitor and manage them. Make a note of any potential solutions or action plans, along with any deadlines.

ShiftX allows you to add comments to each step. Decide how you want to use this feature. Will you keep comments to capture the history of changes, or will you delete them to keep the map clean? Set rules so everyone knows how to use comments effectively.

A process map isn't just a diagram; it can be a repository of knowledge. Link to relevant documents, policies, or regulations directly in your map. Use dynamic links for documents that get updated regularly, so your process map always reflects the most current information.

Some parts of your process may be complex enough to be an own sub-processes. Separate these from your main map to avoid clutter. Make sure these sub-processes have an owner who is responsible for keeping them updated.

Incorporate realistic timeframes into your process map. This helps set expectations for how long each step should take and allows for more accurate planning and scheduling.

Clearly describe how actors in each step interact with each other. Who hands off information to whom? How do different departments communicate within the step? Understanding and defining these interaction points is crucial for a smooth process.

Periodically review your process map to ensure it remains clear and relevant. Look for missing steps, bottlenecks, or any new risks that may have arisen. Regular reviews help keep your process map a living document that evolves with your organization.

By following these steps and using ShiftX, you'll create not just a process map, but a dynamic 

 that will help streamline your workflows, clarify roles and responsibilities, and improve overall efficiency in your organization.

Introduction to Process Mapping

However none of these are tailored for business process management, and they have some major shortcomings:

Process mapping tools are designed for specialists

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is often hard for people to understand

They are essentially advanced whiteboard or drawing tools and not based on structured and logical data

There is no easy way to organize and understand how the processes are connected

It’s hard to collaborate between people and departments

If you have tried some of these tools and felt some of the mentioned shortcomings, we urge you to see how 

ShiftX has a radically different approach to Process Mapping

A process mapping tool is a software that can significantly improve the way you understand and carry out tasks within your company. By visually outlining your workflows, you can see not only how things are currently done, but also identify opportunities for making your processes more efficient and effective. 

Get a quick introduction to process mapping

Everyone should understand, not just the expert

When doing process mapping, one of the most common pains is that people reading it don’t understand. Specialists commonly use Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). Consisting of over 100 symbols, it is known to be hard to decipher and make sense of on the receiving end.

When using PowerPoint to visualize processes, users are limited by the size of the slide and quickly find themselves spending more time aligning boxes and arrows than creating the actual content.

ShiftX was built from the ground up to be fast, easy to use and without the need to know a notation like BPMN or UML. Just tell the story of what happens with steps and paths, ‘@’ the systems and roles involved, and ShiftX takes care of the rest.

Never again spend time carefully aligning boxes and arrows. Updating or rearranging elements is a breeze as well. Just drag, drop and be done.

knowledge about how a business operates is spread throughout the organization

. To succeed with process mapping and business improvement, you need to capture and combine the knowledge and best practices from people all across the organization.

With ShiftX, it's easy to involve people and assign ownership to parts of a process. Allow them to add details, content, links to other systems and issues, or discuss improvement potential right in context with comments.

Easily answer questions like "Where is that system in use?", "What happens before this process?" and "Who is responsible for that process?" because everything in ShiftX is data.

If you have ever used Miro, Microsoft Visio, or PowerPoint for process mapping you know it’s like working on a canvas. There is no way to see reports on what processes specific systems are part of, the connections between different business processes or the aggregated time a specific path takes through the flow.

With ShiftX you can do all of this and more. Helping you and your colleagues see the bigger picture, explore new perspectives and get on with improving and optimizing your operation.

If you want a more in-depth comparison, check out how we 

ShiftX is tailored for Business Process Management and Process Mapping. It has an intentional and well-thought-out way of doing process mapping that results in consistent and easy-to-use process maps.

You no longer have to hire external consultants to do the work. Use the knowledge and competence of the people who already know the ins and outs of your organization. Don't hesitate to 

The Best Process Mapping Tool in 2023

My ongoing and humbling experience tells me that the more I know about a topic, the deeper and wider it seems. So I usually feel more like an expert before I know much about something than I do when I actually know something. Therefore, getting to the point where I can state that I am an expert seems close to impossible.

Passion on the other hand is simpler and more real to talk about in my mind. I am among other things passionate about organization, collaboration and autonomy. In addition I have always had a deep need to understand how things work. People, systems and organizations. This is what eventually led me to co-found ShiftX five years ago. How did it all start?

I was one of the experts. There were two of us, eight of them, a whiteboard and post-it notes. I felt like a fraud. Like we were cheating. Again and again we had these workshops. 6-8 VPs or managers from a wide range of major Norwegian corporations. We were there to help them improve their customer journey which in return would improve their revenue. What did we do? We helped them talk. We helped them visualize problems. Could they have done it without us? Most definitely. I guess a change of scenery always helps. And the fact that they were paying these young experts to help them would make it a little bit harder to cancel the four-hour session from their calendars.

It is amazing what can happen when we take the time to talk. See each other in the eyes. Feel each other's pain. Share one another's excitement. I still fail all the time. In my marriage, in my work, with my kids. I make assumptions. I know! Don’t make assumptions! But it’s so freaking hard not to.

This happens in the workplace as well. At scale. Add some competition, pride and gossip to the mix and we find ourselves in a giant toxic mess. We hide behind busyness, expectations and endless streams of important emails. And hey, don’t ask that question! Someone might think you are stupid or incompetent! This might sound like an exaggeration to some, but normal or even an understatement to others.

If I wasn’t a firsthand witness I wouldn't have used those words. The tension in the room could be so tangible I felt that one tiny misstep would result in total breakdown. That's why I love it when years of misunderstanding and grudge vanish in an instant as one manager finally experiences and feels the pain of another. Seeing each other in the eyes, knowing that we are on the same team and actually listening to what the other has to say is so unbelievably powerful.

Those kinds of stories are what drives us at ShiftX. Yes to AI. Yes to automation. Yes, yes, yes… But don’t forget the people! Having the right balance between autonomy, collaboration and oversight has always been what makes me either thrive and over deliver, or choke and start looking for another job. Trivial small adjustments can have an enormous impact on so many levels. From the bottom line to the lives of the families of your co-workers.

I know this is about culture, and that changing culture is hard. We are not going to state that we are “The Solution” to the problem either. Not yet anyway. What we will say is that we think differently. We think that focusing on the people, believing that most people have a deep desire to do a great job and that building tools that embrace democratization, collaboration and autonomy is key to unlocking new levels of performance, creativity and continuous improvement in any organization.

Let’s go back to the workshops. To the heart of improving customer journeys. We started to see a pattern. It was so predictable that we now consider it the rule rather than the exception. Let me try to explain what we saw.

When going on a journey you bring a map. And if you found this article you might be familiar with “Customer Journey Maps” or “Business Process Maps”. Here is the issue. Given a map of a city, a regular human being knows exactly what it is and is able to make sense of it quickly. That is not usually the case with 

I can hear all the objections to my statement. Organizations are complex! They change all the time! There are so many variations, levels, technical details, compliance requirements and more. Yes! That is true. But if your goal is to help someone understand how to get from SOHO to Central Park you don’t give them a map of the sewage system or the electrical grid. You give them a high-level overview of Manhattan, probably with the Subway as an overlay.

Why is it then that managers, VPs and leaders across businesses all over the world are given maps that they don’t understand? Or even worse, they are required to produce maps they don’t understand. And end up hiring consultants to produce 

. And therefore creating maps that have a 100% guarantee of being somewhere between inaccurate and complete nonsense.

I think we can do better, and that we should do better.

I’m amazed at all the hard-working, diligent people we meet. The sacrifice managers have to make as they try to deliver on their KPIs while serving and meeting the needs of their employees. That’s also why I think that they deserve great tools that help them do their job, that are easy to use and that promotes involvement and delegation.

We are still a small company with a lot to prove and a long way to go, but we have enough traction and excited customers for us to know we are onto something. We strongly believe most 

 in the EA (Enterprise Architecture) and BPM (Business Process Management) space greatly miss the mark on user experience. The consequence is way bigger than the lack of functionality, it’s a fundamental flaw. We live to fix it. 

Kill the grudge, free the people and revolutionize BPM

Visio alternative

Take advantage of the extensive sharing options to distribute a process outside your workspace.

Don't stop sharing

Share the process. Spread the knowledge.

Process improvement. One step at a time.

Great ways to use ShiftX

Fast and understandable process mapping

Process Analyst

Process mapping and management

Map smarter with actors

From Journey Mapping to Service Blueprints

Improve indefinitely

Turn insight into action

Journey mapping as it should be

Key Account Manager

Customer journeys

Create engaging routines

Routines and procedures

Follow procedures with ease

Stay in the loop?

Use cases

Product

Process mapping

Customer journey

Routines

Solutions

Templates

Integrations

Pricing

 Read more and see available positions ->

How does your business actually work? Who is involved where? And who is responsible for what? The answer is often spread across numerous documents, tools, and the know-how of different people. It might live in a two-year-old strategy document, a slide deck from last year, or in the mind of a colleague that is currently on vacation.

If this sounds familiar to you, then you are probably lacking a usable and accessible “single source of truth” on how your business operates.

The need to communicate business processes is nothing new and is something leaders do on a daily basis. Often in a textual form or using simple diagramming tools.

High barrier for Collaboration and involvement

Visualizing business processes, on the other hand, is usually left for trained specialists working with customer journeys, compliance, or enterprise architecture. There are a lot of tools built for these specialists, 

 among others. Most of them are built around BPMN, Business Process Model, and Notation – a graphical and computer-readable notation for describing business processes. This makes for a high barrier of entry, and is often the

Due to its complexity, BPMN often requires extensive training to use effectively. This training can be costly in terms of both time and money. Without proper training, there can be misunderstandings or misinterpretations of the symbols and notations used. It leaves all the people without training excluded from understanding.

BPMN diagrams can become very large and complex, making them difficult to maintain and keep updated. BPMN is quite comprehensive and as a result, it can become overly complex. Many of the elements and symbols in BPMN might not be needed in many use cases. This complexity can be a barrier for beginners or people who are not accustomed to process mapping.

A user-friendly alternative – for inclusion

We strongly believe there is a smarter and more efficient way to go about this. A way to unify the need for 

. A way for all people in the company to work together in a unified style that encourages transparency and collaboration across departments.

With ShiftX, you can build a tool that requires no training to get started and that gets better as more people join in building a visual and ever-improving representation of how your business works.

Why BPMN is outdated and ShiftX made a BPMN alternative

Traditional tools

High barrier for Collaboration and involvement

Training Required

Difficult to Maintain

A user-friendly alternative – for inclusion

Give it a go - it's free

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Introduction to Process Mapping

The Best Process Mapping Tool in 2023

Kill the grudge, free the people and revolutionize BPM