Six months ago I worked on a business model of a department that everyone (including the department) KNEW had not just one, but multiple complex business processes due to following legal constraints. Diving in, I quickly agreed it was complex. I was using Visio UML Activity to document the process. Spent many hours on it, but did not finish the model of even the first process. Typical.
Now for the un-typical. Two days ago I picked up the unfinished model and found it to be 90% complete. (Isn't everything 90% complete?). Dreading getting my head back into the process, I started reviewing the diagrams. Two amazing (to me and to the department I was working with) occurred.
1. Within an hour, we all remembered the process AND had a good handle on the remaining tasks.
2. Made a copy of the overview of the first process as a starter page for processes #2 and #3. The only difference in process#2 was to remove about 6 activities. The only difference in process#3 was to add about 6 activities. Granted some of the details within the activities will change - but many of the activities will be EXACTLY the same for all 3 processes. What we all expected to take a few more weeks of work, is going to take less than a day.
So what? There's a business process documented. Even without completion of this model the following benefits have already been seen.
1. Some duplicated tasks were streamlined, reducing time to complete the process.
2. A change to the process was made as it was being modeled (needed to start posting and tracking some information on the web) - the process model was used to determine the quickest way to add this to the existing activities, and the new activities were added to the model in a matter of minutes.
3. Each individual in this department with the same responsibilities was performing the process in a different way. This is now being standardized and individuals can now cover for each other with very little effort.
4. Document imaging is being added to this department. As the process was modeled, each document was assigned a name. The business process now provides a quick way to identify capture and retrieval points of all documents (of which there are many).
Was it a lot of work? Yes. Was it fun? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Was it worthwhile? Definitely. It's not even complete and it has added value.