What We Can Learn From Google Maps

I’d like to share with you a little set-piece that I often use with clients as a learning aid.  I call it (rather unimaginatively!) my “Google Maps exercise” and it makes some very neat points with regards to process decomposition and modeling best practices.

A common challenge I encounter is that people get bogged down with figuring out the level of detail they should go to. This isn’t because of the lack of a definitive standard for process levels – I think the root cause of the difficulty is simply that process modeling is not an exact science.  In fact, much of it is quite subjective.

So, the exercise usually goes something like this…

I’ll launch Google Maps, projected on a large screen to share with the audience.

At first, I zoom to country level.

“I’m unfamiliar with this city.” I’ll say. “How do I get from this office building to my hotel? Is this map helpful?”

“No!” they chorus. The scale is too small.

So I zoom in to the regional level.

“Any good now?”

“No!”

“What if I were trying to figure out a route from the next city?”

Maybe!

And so it goes on, until we’re at street level, and the audience agrees that the map is useful for my navigational purposes. What if I switch to terrain view?

“Not so useful!” is the standard response.

“What if I zoom out a little?  Which one is right?”

“Well – they’re both right!” comes the answer on cue.  And so the point is made.

Factual correctness is one thing. Usefulness – based on the appropriate level of detail, and the “view” or “perspective”- is another, and really depends on the intended purpose of the map.  As they say in NLP, “the map is not the territory.”  In other words, it is just a representation of reality that may serve a useful purpose in a certain context.

Successful process modeling incorporates several facets. A standard modeling notation, such as BPMN, is one element. Standards and conventions, beyond the formal rules of the notation, represent another.  But there is a third, less tangible element that relates to style, level of detail, fitness of purpose, crispness of description…the factors of quality communication.  Put it this way – you can speak English and have a word processor, but that alone won’t make you the next Shakespeare – there’s an art to it as well!