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3.1.2. CURRENT TASK FLOWS

The team now magnifies the circled portion of the Big Picture into a moderate level of detail on new pieces of flip chart paper. As before, the team places index cards on flip chart paper that rests on the small round table about which the team is huddled. The flows being documented are the current task flows, not redesigned ones. The focus is on describing the flows rather than critiquing them, but if problems are mentioned they are written on hot pink “issues” removable stickies and placed on the appropriate steps’ index cards. As in the Big Picture, the flows must have triggers, results, and process steps in between. Not much time should be spent creating the Current task flows because the GUI will be based instead on the redesigned flows that are the ultimate product of Part 1.

A desk clerk’s Current flows might look much like the desirable Realistic and Detailed flows illustrated in Figure 2.2. Certainly there should be strong resemblance of the triggers and results, since rarely can those be redesigned by the team designing the GUI. Often, though, the current flows are more complicated than the redesigned flows.

3.1.3. ISSUES AND BOTTLENECKS IN CURRENT TASK FLOWS

The completed, semi-detailed, Current flows now are critiqued by the team. Every team member gets hot pink removable sticky notes on which to write their critiques, just as throughout the entire methodology every team member has some of all the materials; there is no single scribe. Each hot pink sticky gets only one issue or bottleneck, and that sticky is placed on the index card representing the relevant task step. Any kind of issue or bottleneck qualifies, not just overt problems; there may be a task step that works just fine when considered in isolation, but that is obviously a bottleneck when the entire task flow is considered. Issues are written even if no one has a clue what the solutions might be. The focus of this step is on documenting issues rather than solutions, but if solutions happen to be mentioned they are written on square, blue, “possible solutions” stickies that are stuck to the relevant hot pink issue stickies.

An issue with the desk clerk’s current task flows might be the need to go to different screens to see a customer’s record for the different purposes of making a reservation, checking in, and checking out. A separate issue (written on a separate hot pink sticky) might exist within the check-out task; users might need to go to one screen to print out the customer’s bill and to a different screen to unassign the room to that customer. An issue at check-in time might be the need for users to go to one screen to find the particular room to give to the customer and a different screen to make that assignment. Similarly, at check-out time the users might have to go to one screen to unassign the room to the customer and to another screen to increment the hotel’s room availability tally.

3.1.4. SCOPING THE CURRENT TASK FLOWS

Users mark each hot pink sticky issue with its priority, for example, “High”, “Medium”, and “Low”. It’s okay for all issues to be the same priority. The team then draws a circle around the portion of the Current flow that they will work on during this session. They inform that scoping decision with the Current flows’ publicly visible evidence of the breadth and depth of the users’ tasks and with the arrangement and priorities of the hot pink issue stickies. In the best case, all the high-priority hot pink stickies are clustered on a small portion of the task flows, and the team has the power to throw most of the resources of the GUI project into improving those steps. In the worst case, the hot pink stickies are scattered evenly across the task flows, but at least that gives the team confidence that it isn’t wasting resources on an unimportant portion of the users’ work. The scoped Current flows now are posted on the wall for reference during the rest of the session.

Perhaps desk clerks think the issue of going to different screens is low priority when the different screens are for the different tasks of making a reservation, checking in, and checking out, because desk clerks have a fair amount of time to shift gears between those three tasks. However, they might give high priority to the related issue of different screens within the check-in task and within the check-out task because within those tasks the users are pressed for time.

3.1.5. BLUE SKY TASK FLOWS

The team now spends a maximum of 30 minutes documenting an ultimately desirable set of task flows that lacks the problems of the Current flows and that ignores feasibility. This set of flows usually is not quite as detailed as the Current flows, since time spent laying out infeasible details is liable to be wasted. The goal of this phase is to expand the imaginations of the team members. For that reason, the flows must not be mere replicas of the Current flows with each step replaced by one that lacks a problem. This Blue Sky set of flows should be a radical solution, one that fixes problems by redefining the Current flows so drastically that the problematic steps are just absent. This is not merely an accumulation of generally keen ideas, however; each flow must really be an integrated process from triggers to results. Users are the primary players in this phase, but other team members begin to contribute more because users often are unfamiliar with the possibilities of the technology behind the upcoming version of the GUI. This is a brainstorming activity so criticism is not allowed. This set of flows is expressed as index cards and sticky arrows, as were the previous flows and as is illustrated by Figure 2.2.

A Blue Sky version of the desk clerk’s flows might use a single “Check In Customer” step that causes the computer to automatically choose the room based on the customer’s preferences and then to assign the room. That single user step would replace the two separate steps of the user choosing a room and then assigning it to the customer. Likewise, the Blue Sky flow might have a single “Check Out Customer” step that has the computer automatically do the heretofore separate steps of unassigning a room and then incrementing the room availability pool.


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