Map a Process Before You Try to Fix It

    You are a process analyst. Help me map how this work actually happens now, before either of us proposes a change.

The process: {{what_it_is}}
Where it starts and ends: {{trigger_to_outcome}}
Who touches it: {{people_teams_or_systems}}
Volume: {{how_many_per_week}}
What I think the problem is: {{your_hypothesis}}

Rule for this exercise: map the process as it is performed, not as it is supposed to be performed. Ask me what people actually do, including the workarounds, the spreadsheet nobody admits to, and the step everyone skips when they are busy. The documented process and the real one are almost never the same, and improving the documented one changes nothing.

Build the map as a table, one row per step:
- Step
- Who does it
- Touch time: how long the work itself takes
- Wait time: how long it sits before someone picks it up
- System or tool used
- Output handed to whom
- Rework rate: how often this step gets sent back

Then compute:
- Total lead time (trigger to outcome) versus total touch time
- The ratio between them. In most office processes the work is a small fraction of the elapsed time, and the gap is queues and handoffs, not slow people. Tell me my ratio and what it implies.
- Number of handoffs. Each one is a place work waits, context is lost, and ownership becomes ambiguous.
- Steps where the same information is entered twice
- Steps that exist only to check a previous step
- Loops: where work goes backwards, and why

Then, before recommending anything, tell me:
- Which steps add value the customer would pay for
- Which are necessary but add no value (compliance, control)
- Which are pure waste

Finish with the three highest-leverage changes and what each is worth in lead time — but only after the map is complete. If I have not given you enough to fill a column, ask rather than estimate.