Reflection - Visualization

Challenge & Selection:

Visualization is one of the most efficient ways of depicting the problem statement across stakeholder group  who may or may-not be domain experts. The challenge was with one of the global fast-food retailers’  internal technology support incident resolution timeline impacting customer experience and sales/revenue  at the restaurants. I used the visual mapping to portray and define the issues along with the impact of  current process/system on the overall performance.

Application:

I started the high-level mapping journey with the available documentation, content and understanding  from brief session with the incident management team. We discussed the significance of each high-level  step to understand impact and bookmark those steps for further drilldown to validate the assumptions.    The next level mapping which evolved over multiple iterations was an outcome of detailed workshops  including restaurants, incident teams and consultants dissecting each action/step, identifying current  issues, time taken and included swim lanes to bifurcate the information and data flow between human- human, human-machine and machine-machine. I used simple images, graphics, shapes and flow lines to  replicate the discussion and findings visually.    The workshops continued with shift in focus to bifurcate the impact of actions/steps/systems as high,  medium and low for improvement assessment and roadmap.

Insight & Approach:

The exercise helped me and the various stakeholder to identify key issues with the clear indication of which  swim-lane do they currently exist i.e., within people, process & systems. The visual mapping exercise  allowed the participating groups to understand the perspective and working chronology of other  departments while giving a holistic, end-to-end view of the incident journey, it’s impact on customers, sales  and highlight the major bottlenecks that needed immediate attention.

It also helped with corrections to the assumptions made while preparing the high-level map during the drill  down workshops.

I’ve used visual mapping for various such workshops, especially ones involving stakeholders from different  domains or line of businesses. Visualization as a tool has always been an effective & largely most efficient  mechanism of design thinking activities to depict the current state with clear direction of data/information  flow between different set of handlers and systems.


Reflection - Visualization Challenge & Selection : Visualization is one of the most efficient ways of depicting the problem statement across stakeholder group who may or may - not be domain experts . The challenge was with one of the global fast - food retailers ’ internal technology support incident resolution timeline impacting customer experience and sales / revenue at the restaurants . I used the visual mapping to portray and define the issues along with the impact of current process / system on the overall performance . Application : I started the high - level mapping journey with the available documentation , content and understanding from brief session with the incident management team . We discussed the significance of each high - level step to understand impact and bookmark those steps for further drilldown to validate the assumptions . The next level mapping which evolved over multiple iterations was an outcome of detailed workshops including restaurants , incident teams and consultants dissecting each action / step , identifying current issues , time taken and included swim lanes to bifurcate the information and data flow between human- human , human - machine and machine - machine . I used simple images , graphics , shapes and flow lines to replicate the discussion and findings visually . The workshops continued with shift in focus to bifurcate the impact of actions / steps / systems as high , medium and low for improvement assessment and roadmap . Insight & Approach : The exercise helped me and the various stakeholder to identify key issues with the clear indication of which swim - lane do they currently exist i.e. , within people , process & systems . The visual mapping exercise allowed the participating groups to understand the perspective and working chronology of other departments while giving a holistic , end - to - end view of the incident journey , it ’s impact on customers , sales and highlight the major bottlenecks that needed immediate attention . It also helped with corrections to the assumptions made while preparing the high - level map during the drill down workshops . I ’ve used visual mapping for various such workshops , especially ones involving stakeholders from different domains or line of businesses . Visualization as a tool has always been an effective & largely most efficient mechanism of design thinking activities to depict the current state with clear direction of data / information flow between different set of handlers and systems .