Chances are, unless you have been living in the past, that your process maps have been created with an electronic drawing tool. That being the case, you may want to take advantage of features that will help you check quality more easily. TaskMap 4 Professional has some excellent automated features for quality checking of your maps.
Mistakes are introduced in process maps for a variety of reasons, however here are three areas we can check that will improve the quality of our process maps.
- Check your links. Broken links are more common than you think. If you use PowerPoint and have not checked your links you will find tasks moving around without their connectors. Many systems will highlight the end points of the task link when selected.
- Identify Duplicate Task Numbers. Most process maps will have a task number assigned to each task. For reporting, re-use and sharing of that information a unique Task Identifier or Number will often be used. Check to ensure that number has not used twice in the same number.
- Connectors and Hyperlinks. Most tools now offer the capability to link one page to another with the connector shape. In addition, connecting that shape using a hyperlink is increasingly popular. If you manually connect these links together, ensure they are working before you publish or distribute your map to others.
This is particularly important if you publish your maps to the web, where a broken connector may cause readers not to reach the destination page in your process.
TaskMap 4 Professional QA features include link checking, duplicate tasks and connector hyperlink checks
