8D Process Checklist
Processes are hard.
You probably understand the work that you do intuitively and probably don’t have the processes you use to get your work done written down anywhere. That includes rote and rigid processes like accounting, paperwork, etc. but also creative processes.
Even people who natively think systematically and methodically (hello!) in my observation tend to be good at recognizing and executing processes but overrely on that native intuition and fail to suitably document things. Which is to say the best of us struggle with process documentation. There’s an old trope that says “You can’t read the label when you’re stuck inside the jar”. And an even older trope that says “The Cobbler’s kids have no shoes”.
In the course of working with clients uncovering their processes so that they can be improved or implemented within systems has become a critical foundation of my work. If even the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, imagine how hard it is for organizations and people who are not intuitively methodological to create and maintain effective processes and systems. Every professional I work with can articulate roughly how their processes work when everything goes right but under five minutes of cursory questioning it’s quickly revealed the processes are more complex and varied than they believe them to be on a surface level. Being interviewed (interrogated) can pull out a lot of additional detail, but people are simply not able to sit down and work their way through a process.
So in a decade of doing this, I’ve created this 8D Process Checklist that I use when trying to extract working processes from the brains of clients. As we are talking through the process and as we are checking the draft document and process, we use these 8 D’s to check that all the critical interfaces and externalities of a process have been covered.
- Divisions and Stakeholders
- Decisions
- Documents and Deliverables
- Data In and Out
- Dollars
- Dates and Deadlines
- Diversions
- Definition of Done
Divisions and Stakeholders
Who is involved in this process? Who kicks it off? Who does it hand off to? Who gets involved?
Decisions
What needs to be decided at any point? Who (from Divisions and Stakeholders) makes the decision? What do they need to make the decision? Is that a separate process?
Documents and Deliverables
What documentation is needed to start and complete the process? What deliverables are created? Where do they go?
Data In and Out
What data is needed to start the process? What data is created during the process? Is it transient or permanent? Where is it stored? Does the process hand data off to another system or process?
Dollars
Does the process touch Dollars anywhere? Does it receive Dollars, cost Dollars, or generate Dollars? Who needs to know? Where do they come from or go? Does it need to account for them?
Dates and Deadlines
Does the process receive any Dates or Deadlines? Does it self-generate them (“Due three days after starting”, etc.) Does it impact or set Dates or Deadlines for other people or processes?
Diversions
Where can things go off track? Dead ends, edge cases, delays, blockers, cancellations, etc.
Definition of Done
How do you know when the process is done? What tasks internal to the process need to be completed?