Step 2 of capturing a Business Process is to work out where it really starts.

A good rule of thumb is to think about where the ‘thing’ you’re dealing with – the ‘Noun’ in your process’s name – gets created, from the perspective of the business.   These are good questions to ask:

• If the thing is created outside the business, where does it first come into contact with it?
• If the thing is created inside the business, where does that happen?  Is that where it should happen?

You can ask similar questions to find where your process really ends:

• If the thing passes through the business, when does it leave?
• If the thing only exists inside the business, where does it get destroyed, or archived?

It’s helpful to think about the process from its real beginning to its real end, because that’s how many opportunities for improvement can be identified, without having to go to the trouble of documenting the entire thing first.   It gives you a shortcut, if you like.