When you’re tasked with documenting your department’s processes, it can be overwhelming. Often times the project is so hard to approach that the gut reaction is to rely on everyone’s favorite method for doing anything: start at the beginning, and take it one step at a time.
Unfortunately, this approach just doesn’t work when documenting business processes. It’s not the processes themselves that present a problem — it’s the people. When you try to document each step chronologically, the inevitable result is a trip down rat-hole lane. Rat-holing is when you get caught up with the minor details and exceptions that occur in any process. I’ve seen documentation sessions go on for hours with little to show for the effort because each stakeholder in the room was preoccupied with the subtle exceptions to the steps that they themselves were most passionate about.
I’m very happy to announce that the Spring ’08 release of Blueprint is now live. A quick rundown of the new features is below. But don’t take my word for it: log in now and check it out. Sign up for a your own account now if don’t have one yet.
Improvements in the Spring ’08 release:
Improved usability in the diagram view : Significant ease of use and productivity improvements have been made in the diagram based upon customer feedback and testing. The toolbar in the diagram view has been replaced by the Blueprint “plus sign”, which allows you to click where you want to insert an item and have it show there immediately. New Blueprint users will be able to get started quicker and experienced users can get their job done a lot faster.
I’m happy to announce that the Spring release of Blueprint is nearly here. We’ve been working on this one for a while and I think it makes Blueprint hands down the best process modeler on the block, online or off. We’re really excited about it and I think you will be too.
Improved usability in the diagram view : Significant ease of use and productivity improvements have been made in the diagram based upon customer feedback and testing. The toolbar in the diagram view has been replaced by the Blueprint “plus sign”, which allows you to click where you want to insert an item and have it show there immediately. New Blueprint users will be able to get started quicker and experienced users can get their job done a lot faster.
Improved drawing functionality in the diagram view : Based upon customer feedback, we’ve closed the remaining gaps in Blueprint’s diagramming functionality. Blueprint now supports multiple end points inside a single diagram as well as loops and parallel flows beginning and ending at any activity. Blueprint should now be able to represent nearly any process flow that you can dream up.
Last month Blueprint’s Director of Engineering, Alex Moffat, spoke at the GWT: Voices That Matter conference. Alex talked about how we built the product and the tradeoffs we made along the way. His talk was really interesting and provides a great peek behind the veil into the development process.
Google was nice enough to record the presentation. It’s embedded below.
When you click the Print button, Blueprint generates a PDF version of your diagram. The great part about the PDFs is that they’re extremely scalable–you can view them on screen or print them on any sized printer (or plotter!). Here are a few tips for working with them:
Viewing Diagrams On Screen Zooming
By default, Adobe Reader scales the diagram so that the entire picture fits on one screen. If you’re going to present your diagram to other people, you’ll want to zoom in:
Choose Actual Size from the zoom menu to view the diagram as it will appear when printed.
Need to reorganize your processes? Over the weekend, we added a feature that a lot of people have been asking for: the ability to move processes between projects.
To take advantage of it, go to the Projects page and find the process that you’d like to move:
Then just click the Change Project link and pick the project you’d like to move it to:
The Blueprint product team is continuously improving the product based upon customer feedback. We’ve recently made some exciting usability improvements and introduced some new features that we’d like to tell you about…
Multi-level Undo
Made a mistake? Blueprint views include a new action toolbar with a one-click access to easily undo your recent changes. You can also print your process diagrams and export to Powerpoint for sharing with others.
It Should be Easy
We’ve made numerous changes to improve the ease of use and usability of Blueprint. These changes include improved help, guided wizards for creating processes, search capabilities, improved process lists, and easier navigation.
Diagram Labels
Gateways and splits now include text labels for improved readability and legibility of diagrams. Blueprint also supports having labels on flow lines as shown below.
Ever make a mistake and wish you could go back in time and fix things? I do. All the time. That’s why we’re adding the ability to undo changes in the next version of Blueprint.
Soon you’ll be only a control-Z away from making amends for that accidental touch of the delete key. Eagle-eyed readers may also notice a few other user interface improvements we have on tap for the next release in the video…
As the Blueprint community has grown, we’ve gotten many requests for a place to interact with other people that are discovering and documenting their processes. People have asked for a place not only to ask questions about Blueprint, but to also share best practices and find solutions to common problems when undertaking a process improvement project.
We’ve heard your requests, so we’ll be opening up The Blueprint Forums very soon. Here’s a quick screenshot to whet your appetite…
When we were initially researching Blueprint, we saw one thing over and over again: process diagrams hanging on the walls. If you’re trying to teach the details of a process to someone or just trying to get a bird’s eye view of things, it’s hard to beat a big printout pinned to the wall. We even had one customer tell us that they measured the complexity of their process in terms of the length of butcher paper required to draw it!
Then again, once it comes time to change what you’ve got drawn out on the wall, things get a little hairier. That’s why we recently added the ability to print scalable versions of the diagrams you create in Blueprint. Now you’ll be able to utilize the collaboration and change history features in Blueprint to keep your processes up to date easily and quickly, while still retaining the ability to create over sized diagrams to put on the wall. Better yet, since we generate a PDF version of your process, it’s your choice whether you want your process to fit in your Moleskine or on 30 feet of butcher paper.
Unfortunately, this approach just doesn’t work when documenting business processes. It’s not the processes themselves that present a problem — it’s the people. When you try to document each step chronologically, the inevitable result is a trip down rat-hole lane. Rat-holing is when you get caught up with the minor details and exceptions that occur in any process. I’ve seen documentation sessions go on for hours with little to show for the effort because each stakeholder in the room was preoccupied with the subtle exceptions to the steps that they themselves were most passionate about.
Watch a preview video now.
Watch a demo
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