Hi all,

This isn't necessarily an outliner request - though maybe it is! - but I thought this the most knowledgeable place to ask for this.

Our business now has more employees, more processes and more plates spinning than we saw coming. I'm struggling to adapt from being in a position where I could keep track and visualise those plates spinning in my mind, to one where there is no way I could possibly know everything that happens in our business processes.

I'm looking for a solution to visually be able to map every part of our business, the processes, the data sources, the job roles and people, and including data that links them together. For example, a process for a sales person to make a sale depends on certain data being available, which depends on someone else adding and validating that data. If that data changes, we need a way to know what the knock-on effects might be in other parts of the business.

I was thinking of mind maps, but I don't know of a solution that would allow custom data attributes on nodes to be able to reference other nodes (i.e. "Depends On", "Data Source"). A standard database with the option to link entries would work, but would lack a visual, "birds eye view" aspect, unless I built something custom.

Does anyone have any ideas of avenues to look down please? I should probably add that this is something I'm doing myself, and will share with my colleagues after - I don't have a four figure budget, just my own pocket! ;)

Thank you so much in advance for any suggestions,
Matt

Interesting question. You didn't mention if you need to be on a particular operating system, but I think Tinderbox for Mac would be well-suited to a job like that. Just bear in mind that a sizable time investment would probably be required to learn the software (if you haven't already) and to set up the dynamic business map.

Perhaps Freeplane can help. It's free, so no barrier to try it out. You can add attributes to nodes, and put hyperlinks inside attributes to link nodes together. You can also clone nodes, so an edit in one place is replicated everywhere. I use that when I want to organise the same information in different ways, e.g. by topic or by source.

I'm not sure if the mindmap layout will cover all your needs, since it's a branching tree, not a flow diagram. But it's more visual than a database table or a list.

Hi,

If I understand correctly, what you want to develop is a model of your company, including quantitative data flows between people / teams / departments.

I see several different routes of varying complexity and functionality that you can take:

- A set of spreadsheets, each of which represents a business entity being fed from / feeding to others; a summary sheet would provide the bird's eye view.

- A dedicated business modelling software solution, from dynamic Business Model Canvas to much more detailed tools.

- An agile approach, such as Kanban, to visualise and manage the business processes and flows in a pragmatic manner

- An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform bringing together all day-to-day work (this could take ages to set up and in the meantime your company may have changed!)

Does any of the above sound as what you want?

There are mind mapping tools that include calculated fields, but I would advise against them in the context of a business, as in my view they don't scale well and are not great for collaboration.

Cheers,
Alexander


Matt Harwood wrote:

I'm looking for a solution to visually be able to map every part of our
business, the processes, the data sources, the job roles and people, and
including data that links them together. For example, a process for a
sales person to make a sale depends on certain data being available,
which depends on someone else adding and validating that data. If that
data changes, we need a way to know what the knock-on effects might be
in other parts of the business.

I got interested in Flying Logic and theory of constraints, which sounds like might be applicable to what you're talking about.

Back then I didn't have cash woes and bought a copy of Flying Logic. It's still on my Mac and I sometimes use it for brainstorming.

Where a Mind Map is a categorization and relationship tool, Flying Logic is more about dependencies and process or decision flow.

It's interesting. I remain intrigued. I don't have enough use for Flying Logic to justify having it, but the idea of taking a structured look at a system of processes is interesting. 'Course, that may reveal the modest level of excitement in my life.

Sounds like you ought to take a look at Notion (notion.so), especially if you want all members of the company to be able to contribute.

It’s deceptive: Notion can be as complex as you want it to be, but is also good for mapping things out.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Sounds like you ought to take a look at Notion (notion.so), especially
if you want all members of the company to be able to contribute.

It's deceptive: Notion can be as complex as you want it to be, but
is also good for mapping things out.

I was just looking a Notion for a different use case and realised that it could work for this as well. Notion pages can have properties, you can organise them in tables, boards, lists and galleries, and you can even create relational links between pages. See: https://www.notion.so/Relations-rollups-fd56bfc6a3f0471a9f0cc3110ff19a79

Firstly, thank you so much for every reply and idea - I am very, very grateful for all your responses!

I am kicking myself but forgot to mention - what I'm looking for would need to be either Windows-based or in a browser, and *ideally* wouldn't lock me in too much to a platform.

From the replies so far, I'm definitely intending to take a close look at Flying Logic, Notion and Freeplane. Any further suggestions are obviously encouraged!

Not to fly too far off topic, it seems a far more common stage of a company's life than is often thought of - too big for remembering everything, too small for a corporate culture of documenting everything.

Thank you again everyone!

Hey Matt,

Not sure so much about the visual aspect, but any tool that provides some version of clones (Workflowy, BrainStorm, Ultra Recall) seems to get one part of the way to an overall map, in that "data source 123" can show up as the responsibility of a person or department, and also show up as a requirement for "process A" as well as "process B." As I'm typing this, I wonder if TheBrain might be worth a try, since it's more visual and you can actually label the connections between items...

Also, I'd recommend the book "Work the System" by Sam Carpenter. It's about how he installed standard operating procedures in his company - which may be obvious enough, but I thought his approach of having the people doing the work document their own processes plus the fact that any procedure could be changed rapidly without a lot of bureaucracy was pretty interesting. He has a generally non-holistic approach, believing that optimizing individual sub-systems is more important than even comprehending the overall system. For example, a car requires a working engine, but the overall functionality of the car is not really related to the inner workings of the engine (the engine can be a black box sub-system).

As to the actual business data, I think having a centralized, canonical data source that can be accessed and used by multiple processes without changing the storage format makes everything less fragile. I like relational databases sitting on a server for that purpose, but Notion now has an API, so I imagine it could serve the same purpose with some ingenuity.

I am not quite sure if you're saying you need something that automates these processes, or just visualizes them for you and your team. If the latter, you might take a look at TheBrain. See this video as a possible use case:

https://thebrain.com/apps/operations

Steve

I should make it clear that this is an older video using an earlier version TheBrain when they were still calling it PersonalBrain. But it has only gotten better at this stuff since then.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I am not quite sure if you're saying you need something that automates
these processes, or just visualizes them for you and your team. If the
latter, you might take a look at TheBrain. See this video as a possible
use case:

https://thebrain.com/apps/operations

Steve

I'd suggest https://www.plectica.com/ for the mapping and visualisation needs.

If it's set up correctly (using short titles for top level cards, regions, and relationships), it would enable you to use the semantic zoom, meaning that you can zoom in and out with the mouse or touchpad and the software hides the detail and highlights the 'big picture' view of the key elements and relationships, while you can also zoom in and develop things in great detail.

The free version allows you to get a good idea of how this works (there are eventually limits as to how many cards you can add (250 in total).

Matt Harwood wrote:

For example, a process for a sales person to make a sale depends on certain data being available, which depends on someone else adding and validating that data. If that data changes, we need a way to know what the knock-on effects might be in other parts of the business.

I was thinking of mind maps, but I don't know of a solution that would allow custom data attributes on nodes to be able to reference other nodes (i.e. "Depends On", "Data Source").

Hi Matt,

This type of dependencies is typically managed with project management software (i.e. Gantt charts) which can link tasks with different properties (link type, delays, critical path calculation - PCM, etc)

Have you considered this ? Why do you think that a visualization tool would be better suited ?

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
https://www.infoqube.biz

Another option for just the diagramming part is yEd by yWorks: https://www.yworks.com/products/yed

I believe it's free to use.