It is the week of Thanksgiving so many of us are spending a lot of time planning the Thanksgiving meal. Once the menu has been decided, the rest is about process.
When mapping a business process, discover the following: The activities that are to be performed; Determine who will be performing the activity; Determine what information they need to perform the activity; Determine what information they will create as a result of that activity; and Identify where that information will be stored.
So, let’s look at the Thanksgiving meal from a process management point of view.
Activities to be performed might include:
- Choose the menu/entrees
- Choose the recipes that will be followed
- Purchase the ingredients
- Create a plan that includes: The time to start cooking; The cooking order of the entrees; Schedule in time for the football game; Determine who will cook which item
- Gather ingredients for each dish and place at ‘stations’
- Prepare and cook entrées
- Serve entrées
- Give Thanks…
Next, identify who will perform each activity. Gather what they will need to perform their activity [recipe, ingredients, station]. Their output is an entrée rather than information and that output will be gratefully consumed.
Not only does this make preparing a Thanksgiving meal look complex, in fact it is complex. Complex and fattening…
This is a perfect example of a manual process. Since you do this once or twice a year, it doesn’t make sense to automate anything. Certainly, you wouldn’t buy software for this, but maybe you could buy a pumpkin pie or Paul Prudhomme’s sweet potato pecan pie…
Happy Thanksgiving!
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