Planning and Visualizing Business Processes for Application Development

Planning is the most critical part of creating an application. When planning, you should consider what problem the application will solve, who will use it, and which user goals it will satisfy. Understanding these answers keeps the design focused on solving a problem rather than treating the app itself as the goal.

This section teaches you how to identify the business problem (use case), deeply understand the business process, use your solution to optimize that process, decide whether the process is worth automating, and create a project plan.

You will also learn who contributes to solving the business problem and how to document the business process.

To move to the next task in the workflow, consider whether the next step depends on data from the current task, who will perform it, and how they know when to start.

Visual mapping of the process involves drawing the business workflow you aim to address. You can sketch on paper or use tools like Visio or PowerPoint. The map should include steps directly related to the application as well as preceding and subsequent steps, showing how the app fits into the overall process.

After creating the map, verify with your team that the process is captured accurately. An example business flow diagram is provided in the original article.

List each activity in order and link it to the next part of the process: start with the first action toward the goal, draw lines to boxes representing activities, use diamonds for decision points with true/false branches, link activities sequentially (some may run in parallel across departments), and culminate with the activity that achieves the goal.

You can enrich the map with data such as time spent or cost of tasks, allowing you to compare and identify improvement areas, or to quantify savings from a new process.