Process mapping: Definition, examples, and guide

I just made chili (not a flex, just a fact). Unlike most people who make chili, I don't have a go-to recipe. I just kind of wing it, so the result is a bit of a mystery every time. But even if the ingredients change, my approach doesn't. I set out the San Marzanos, a few cans of beans, and whatever cocktail of seasonings feels right. 

That's basically process mapping: the painstaking work of systematizing a workflow—just replace all the seasonings with corporate jargon and the proteins with business stuff.

Here's how to use process mapping to keep your work clear and repeatable and your chili appropriately spicy.

Table of contents:

• What is process mapping?

• Types of process maps

• How to create a process map

• Process map examples

• Process mapping best practices

• Benefits of process mapping

• Map your processes with Zapier

What is process mapping?

Process mapping (or process charting, process diagramming, or business process architecture) is visually laying out the steps, resources, and stakeholders involved in a single workflow to make it repeatable and consistent.

The idea is to create visual documentation that you can package for review, alignment, and iteration. In short: it's what my fellow Type A's do every time they do anything.

With Zapier Canvas, you can automate your process mapping: use natural language to build out your workflows just like a process map, then connect it to all the apps you use to turn the map into a fully automated system. Learn more about how to use Zapier Canvas.

Types of process maps

As the saying goes, there's more than one way to map a process—probably infinite, to be exact. But for the sake of time, let's whittle that down to the most common ones so you can pick the flavor that satisfies your process palate.

Note that while some of these are visually distinct diagram types or established frameworks, others are more philosophical approaches.

Flowchart

Simple, elegant, flowing—that's not just copy from your shampoo bottle. It also describes a flowchart: the go-to process map format of steps, decisions, and endpoints arranged chronologically.

Use to: Simplify and iterate a sequence of actions.

SIPOC map

SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers. This bird's-eye chart helps you see how processes interact across teams. It's not a map, per se, but it can help you map sequences by getting all your (mixed) metaphoric cards on the table. 

Use to: Identify key process elements and their interactions.

Detailed process map

As Stefon would say, this map has everything: decisions, contingencies, actions, reactions, inputs, outputs, analytical markers, stakeholders, stakedroppers, subtasks, sub-subtasks, a team of becorduroyed accountants named Rafe, etc. 

This map is not for the faint of heart, eschewing brevity in favor of granularity to give you a diagram that answers all questions about who does what before they're asked.

Use to: Document granular descriptions of actions, sequences, and roles.

High-level process map

This process mapping technique is the opposite of a detailed process map: high-level actions with key stakeholders to show the general progression of actions. Like a Gen Z influencer friend-zoning their current partner on "Love Island," it keeps things cazh. 

Use to: Communicate a general sequence of process milestones

Rendered process map

This take on process mapping is less about representing your processes as they are, and more about "rendering" (reworking) today's processes into ideal future ones to help you see what aspects need to be tweaked to actualize that vision.

Use to: Take a critical look at how processes can be reworked to meet goals

Swimlane map

For those who need everyone to stay in their lane, this linear diagram organizes functions into clearly delineated "lanes" at your preferred level of specificity, from individual to department.

Use to: Organize steps by department or role to clarify handoffs

Value stream map

Six Sigma-ers (Six Sigmers?) will be familiar with this method of documenting product build efforts with an eye toward how resources pass from step to step. It's less focused on how a process is done than it is on what's required for a process to be executed.

Use to: Monitor resource requirements for product or service execution

Deployment map

If you guessed that this type of process map tells you how team members are deployed, you'd be correct. Showcasing the interplay between teams, these maps highlight the flow of cross-functional actions so you can see where the baton isn't getting handed off cleanly from team to team.

Use to: Find bottlenecks in processes spanning multiple teams

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)

This business process mapping methodology is one of the bases for most of the commonly used visual taxonomies for process mapping. It might seem rote now, but this framework of using consistent visual representations to show workflow process mapping components is and can be applied widely across process map methodologies.

Use to: Promote visual consistency across processes.

How to create a process map

To create a process map, you'll establish a repeatable process, collect a set of inputs and related outputs related to that process, and illustrate that process in a shareable visual medium.

This will often align with one of the frameworks noted above, but you could also wing it. I'll lay it out in admittedly generic terms to account for either preference.

1. Find the right process: Maps aren't helpful if the steps change every time. Pick a process that's stable, iterable, and for which it'd be useful to have an established sequence to share.

2. Decide on granularity: The following steps will all depend on just how specific you need your process to be. Mid- to high-level mapping should have fairly few inputs and focus on variables like decisions or contingent outcomes. Focused maps with many steps will need inputs for potentially every action or resource.

3. Lay out key variables: Different frameworks may call variations of these by different names, but basically any process map will require a catalog of variables and elements like actions, roles, resources, and decisions, along with their associated outcomes.

4. Assign iconography: If you don't know where to start, there are typical visual lexicons you can refer to with variously colored geometric shapes (more on that below). You can also wing this based on what visuals make sense for your process or brand, but the main thing is ensuring they're distinctive and consistent.

5. Catalog the steps: Once you assign the elements their icons, arrange them in their optimal order, being attentive to splits at decision points or multiple possible outcomes. 

6. Review and optimize: Follow the process icon-by-icon, like a highly optimized and probably very fun choose-your-own-adventure game. Everything should have its place—anywhere a single input necessarily follows another input with no potential for variation, based on your preferred granularity, it may be redundant.

Choosing the right process mapping tools

Lastly (arguably, firstly), you'll also want to be sure you've got the right medium to map out your process. To visualize your workflow, you could draw by hand as a start before you take to a generic interface like Google Drawings, a word processor, or, if you're feeling really adventurous, a spreadsheet. There are dedicated flowchart diagramming apps that could help with this, or you could even give your drawing to ChatGPT and have it create a process map from it.

A basic visual representation like you'll get from those is great if all you want to do is admire your beautifully crafted sequence of triangles and squares. But why not let your process carry itself toward the end of the map? 

An AI orchestration platform like Zapier can integrate all the apps your process uses into a cohesive workflow. Start with Zapier Canvas to visually map every step, asset, and decision fork. Once you get your process automated, you can turn it into an automated process with a few clicks.

Process mapping symbols

Whether you're defaulting to pre-packaged process mapping symbols or establishing your own, process mapping symbols should hit all the following marks:

• Visually distinctive: Not the place to alternate between decagon and dodecagon, or hedge between your four favorite shades of soft beige.

• Visually consistent: Icons should also relate on first glance. Standardize to one shape with varied colors for related elements, avoid repeating colors across unrelated shapes, and try to simplify your visual taxonomy so you don't have multiple input types that have only one represented symbol in your process.

• Visually logical: Lean on visual associations (green means go, octagon means stop, outline of a chili means spicy, etc.), and establish a sensible visual processing hierarchy (are inputs associated by shape or color?).

All that said, here's an example of how the above best practices might manifest in mapping symbols.

Process map examples

Admittedly, we've talked pretty abstractly so far about very specific visual concepts, which is usually a good recipe for a furrowed brow. Let these process mapping examples from across various common use cases in Zapier Canvas be the fancy face roller that unfurrows it.

Ticket and incident process map

A map like this can track how customer or IT support tickets are received, categorized, escalated, and resolved. Once it's put into action, it can pull requests in from any source, use AI to analyze and respond, and automatically update statuses. Here's a template to get you started.

Approval request process map

To correct inefficiencies across internal or approval processes, you could map how requests move through an approval chain for things like marketing budgets, content reviews, or vacation requests.

To help you keep those requests moving through approval as smoothly as possible, start with this approval form template to move requests through notification, request tracking, and status updates.

Lead intake process map

To visualize the path from a new lead submission to assignment, nurturing, and conversion, a map like this reveals where leads get lost between form fills and follow-up.

Process maps that show how leads go from intake through your nurturing funnel and into retention campaigns will help you orchestrate your lead flows. Start with one of these templates.

Process mapping best practices

At this point, I've given a lot of detailed bullet lists outlining best practices for various parts of the process mapping process, but let's step back and recap some broad best practices that should apply across phases.

• Start with a goal: Before you start, be sure you know what you want your map to help you achieve, which will direct how you approach it. If you're looking to find bottlenecks in an inefficient process, you'll be much more thorough than if you want to lay out milestones to specify team roles and responsibilities.

• Look for iterable processes: Focus on processes that are either iterable (needing to be repeated in the same way by multiple people), variable (needing an unambiguous source of process truth), complex (needing to be ironed out and optimized), or some combination of each.

• Focus stakeholder input: As with your food kitchen, it's best to avoid having too many cooks in your business kitchen when mapping a process. You don't want to convolute a process by including unnecessary steps that may be specific to some stakeholders, and therein lies a problem these maps can solve: standardization. Focus stakeholder input on identifying process points where there is reasonable ambiguity and/or a variety of decisions or outcomes so you can keep your team aligned on optimal processes.

• Test and get feedback: However many cooks you cooked with, run your mapped processes by people who use or oversee them. Have people who were not involved test them as well to see if they still have questions, run into ambiguities, or arrive at outcomes other than what you've accounted for.

• Automate: And maybe most important of all, don't forget to automate. (You can't forget to do what's being automatically done for you.) Zapier can help you turn mapped processes into fully orchestrated, AI-enhanced workflows, executing behind the scenes with as much (or little) human oversight as you like.

Benefits of process mapping

If it's not clear by now, there are more benefits to creating process maps than just organizing a workflow. Process mapping also:

• Standardizes workflows so tasks are executed the same way no matter who's doing them

• Defines tasks for cohesive onboarding

• Establishes roles and responsibilities for cleaner collaboration across teams and stakeholders

• Accounts for resource needs at scale as your team grows

• Improves onboarding efficiency with clearly defined processes

• Enables automation when you orchestrate it with AI-powered templates

Map your processes with Zapier

If mapping your process is like organizing your chili spices, automating your process is like having your chili cooked and delivered to your bowl by a Michelin-star chili-making robot precisely on hot chili day.

With Zapier Canvas, you can visually design your workflows just like a process map, then connect them directly to your entire tech stack to turn the map steps into a fully automated system. Learn more about how to use Zapier Canvas, or get started now.

Related reading:

• What is workflow orchestration? And how to get started

• Workflow automation: What it is, why it matters, and how you can use it

• Workflow management: Definition and best practices

• Workflow vs. process: Key differences and examples