Reflection, Visualization

Challenge

As System Analyst in a Telecom company, I once joined a team to enhance the complaints resolution  processes of Customer Services area. The customers throughout the country would call at the call  center to register their complaints regarding Telecom services they use. Customer Service Agents at  the call center would fill the complaint sheets manually and, at the day end, send these complaints  to the Exchange for technical resolution. The exchange was in the same city but at a distance. Once a  complaint is resolved, the Exchange would send the information back to the Customer Service.  Finally, the agents at Customer Service would inform customers about the outcome of complaints. It  means that even the first response to the customers would follow atleast after 2 to 3 working days  of the complaints registration.

It was a semi-government company and hence Customer Services and Exchange were headed by  different heads and had their own Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The challenge was to build  a common understanding of the new business process flow, which may not comply with some of the  strict protocols of the SOPs, but should provide a faster response to the customers and thus improve  customer service.

As we proceeded with initial meetings, I realized that though the desired functionality of the  proposed system was well discussed, and the stakeholders were clear what the new system will do.  But they did not have a common understanding of how the new business processes will look like and  who will do what. The later was utmost important so that every department could incorporate it in  their SOPs.

Selection

While we had Process Flow Diagrams and Flow Charts to depict the flows within the processes but  there was no way to show the inputs and outputs of the processes and most importantly who does  what.

We began to use activity diagram to create the business process mappings to cover “what”, “from  whom” and “how” the information will flow into and out of the system. The purpose was to leverage  the capabilities of activity diagram to cover all aspects of the new business process. This includes the  actors, the information and the processors.

But I realized that alone activity diagram is not enough to cover everything in a single visualization.

I took a different approach and selected to use the concepts of use cases and activity diagrams in a  single visualization. These two models are powerful in that they not only show the relationship of  the actors with the processes but also depict the process details at activity level.

Hence, they allow to build a good understanding of the complete picture of a single business model.

Application

I began to show the inputs and outputs of the processes and who does what. The later part was  important to all since every stakeholder wanted a clarity on doing his part in the entire system. So, I  combined the concepts of use case and activity diagram to create a new model that could cover the  actors and key activities in a single visualization. Then, taking the timing concepts from sequence  diagram, I added the categorization of entire model to show the boundaries of customer service,  technical, and supervisory areas. Thus, we avoided switching among multiple diagrams to show a  complete story.

Since this new visualization borrowed few concepts from different diagrams, hence I was concerned  how will the audience react to it since the finished diagram adhered to none of the standard. At first  instance, the unfamiliar style of the visualization created a mixed response in the audience. But I  took a little time to explain the principles and the basis why I used the unstructured model of the  visualization to some extent.

Finally, with a little time and effort, everybody in the audience began to quickly grasp the scope, key  activities, actors, and above all the who will do what. The model was also accepted to become the  base of formulating the new SOPs.

Insight and approach

At first, we were stuck in using the existing visual models and tried to strictly adhere to them. As  soon as we shifted our eyes to adopt a more robust model, which would not necessarily comply to  the existing standards but would aid gaining a complete picture of the proposed flow, we discovered  that free thinking and allowing the elements of unstructured modelling to the art of visualization  brings great results.

Though we should strike the right balance in going unstructured and at the same time not losing the  meaning which we intend to depict through the narration.

