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Lesson Fifteen

Architecture
first

Before anything is built, the workflow gets written out end to end. Every step, in order, with what each one needs. The map is the work.

Scroll, click, or use the arrow keys to move through.Scroll, or use the arrows and dots to move through.

What a map is
The version nobody writes down

Every step in the process, in order, with who or what performs it.

Not the summary version. The version with the step somebody does by hand on a Thursday because the export is wrong.

A map that skips those steps describes a process nobody runs. Anything built from it hits them on the first real input.

Each step
The third is the one people leave blank

What comes in, what goes out, and where the input is held today.

The third is the one people leave blank. “The customer data” is not an answer. The CRM, the fields, and the person who administers it is an answer.

A mapped workflow
A quote going out, written down
1
Sales takes the requirements on a call. They live in notes and an email thread.
2
The estimator opens last year's quote for a similar job. It is a spreadsheet on a share drive.
3
Pricing comes from the current cost sheet. A different spreadsheet, updated monthly by one person.
4
The quote is assembled in a document template.
5
It is sent from Outlook. Nothing records that it went.
6
Follow-up is a calendar reminder the salesperson sets.

Six steps, five systems, and two of them are spreadsheets nobody governs.

What it exposes
The parts nobody can reach

Each step shows whether anything but a person can gather its data.

Some systems have a connector. Some need an export. Some are a spreadsheet on somebody’s desktop.

The model can do more than most companies’ systems will permit. The map is how that limit gets found before it is paid for.

Capability comes from the vendor · Reachability comes from the systems already in place
The target
The map usually moves it

The step that takes longest is rarely the step that looked interesting.

Assembling the quote takes twenty minutes. Finding last year’s comparable takes two hours. Nobody counted it, because it is not a step anyone wrote down.

Building first means automating the twenty minutes.

Skipping it
The same three discoveries, arriving late

Each one is answerable while drawing the map.

The data is not reachable

The system holding it has no connector, and the export is manual, and nobody had checked.

Nobody owns the check

The output reaches a customer with no agreement about who reads it first.

The result has nowhere to go

The system that should receive it cannot be written to.

Found afterwards, each one is paid for twice. Once to build the thing that assumed it away, and again to rebuild around it.

Putting it together
The lesson in one line

Map the workflow end to end before building any of it.

Every step, what it takes in, what it produces, and which system holds the input. One page, argued with by somebody who does the work.

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