Process design

Map what happens, not what is supposed to happen

Follow a real instance end to end and record every step, handoff, wait, and rework loop. Talk to the people doing it, who will describe several steps that exist nowhere in the documentation and one or two that everyone has quietly stopped doing.

Then measure two things:

• Touch time — how long the work actually takes.
• Elapsed time — how long it takes to get through.

The gap between them is the process. In most broken processes, work is waiting more than ninety percent of the time, which means speeding up the work changes almost nothing. Attack the waits.

Find the real constraint