Beyond The Flowchart

[Vaio]

I'm a project manager at a construction company and I've been tasked with documenting and improving our bidding process.

I've had Visio 2007 Standard for over two years, but never scratched the surface of its capabilities.  I upgraded to 2010 Premium a few weeks ago and have been spending all of my free time learning everything I can about Visio.

I've learned quite a bit, but not as much as I had hoped.  It appears there are only a couple of dozen people worldwide that use the program, so I'm grateful for the few websites, such as this one, that I can turn to as a resource.  I can't even buy a book on Visio 2010 until they are finally published at the end of Q1 or early Q2 2011.  I know there is one book available, but it looks like it is specialized and probably not relevant to 90% of what I will ever use Visio for.

Back to my upcoming project.  Let's assume I create a reasonably well constructed flowchart or other diagram which my co-workers and I can use to ensure consistency and efficiency when we are bidding projects.  I expect this diagram to be quite large, with many sub-processes which may, or may not, come into play for each individual bid.

For instance, we will need a sub-process when asbestos or lead paint are suspected on a remodel project.  This won't be frequent, but it will come up from time to time and we want to make sure it is considered and ruled in or out on each project.

Currently we have a minimum of two people splitting up the tasks involved for each bid.  For the larger projects there could easily be four or five people involved.   It gets complicated to keep track of who is doing what, or to see exactly what has been done, and what still needs to be done at any given time during the bidding process.

Here is where I need your help.  I doubt we are going to print off an enormous Visio diagram for each project we are bidding and mark it up with pens, pencils, and highlighters.  If we just used the diagram as a guide and then kept track of the process in a spreadsheet or other list it seems like we would be working backwards.

So what's next after you create and visualize your process in Visio?  None of my co-workers have Visio, so they would only have access to the free Visio Viewer.  Even if they did have Visio, is there a way to easily use it in a collaborative manner for each person to update the tasks they are working on?

What traditionally happens after the process diagram is created?  What is beyond the flowchart?

[aledlund]

Their are literally tens of thousands of people who use Visio on a daily basis (enough said). Your challange appears to be focused on Business Process Management (a topic unto itself). Chris posted this interesting article a couple of months ago.

http://www.visguy.com/2010/08/18/bpmn-process-modeling-a-conversation-with-bruce-silver/

Depending on ths size of the business it can be as simple as a Word Document with appropriate sign-off sections or as complex as a Sharepoint Workflow application

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visio/archive/2009/11/23/sharepoint-workflow-authoring-in-visio-premium-2010-part-1.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visio/archive/2010/01/19/sharepoint-workflow-authoring-in-visio-premium-2010-part-2.aspx

For those that want to invest in the time of smart drawings and their validation

http://www.visguy.com/2010/07/21/sample-chapter-for-rules-validation-book/

hth,
al