Diagnose and Redesign a Business Process

{"category":"operations","description":"Use when a consultant or operations owner must improve one bounded workflow suffering from long lead time, rework, excessive handoffs, or quality problems. Move from measured current state to a feasible redesigned process and test plan. Do not use for broad organization transformation or process documentation without an improvement objective.","inputSchema":{"additionalProperties":false,"properties":{"constraints":{"description":"Regulatory, staffing, tooling, service, or change-management limits.","items":{"type":"string"},"type":"array"},"improvementObjective":{"description":"Outcome to improve, e.g. cycle time, quality, cost or throughput.","minLength":1,"type":"string"},"processEvidence":{"description":"Process samples, timestamps, SOPs, interviews, cases, and systems available.","items":{"type":"string"},"type":"array"},"processName":{"description":"The specific process and its start/end boundary.","minLength":1,"type":"string"}},"required":["processName","improvementObjective"],"type":"object"},"schemaVersion":1,"steps":[{"expectedOutputs":[{"description":"Process boundary, user/job, KPI definitions and sample plan.","kind":"process-scope"}],"id":"O70Y","instructions":"Identify customer/user, trigger, start and end events, throughput volume, variants, actors and governing constraints. Select a representative transaction or case type rather than mapping every process simultaneously. Establish existing business metric definitions and source reliability. Speak to frontline doers and accountable owners when available, capturing hidden workarounds and exceptions. Gate: an independent observer can tell which cases belong in the study and what improved performance would mean.","resourceHints":[],"title":"Bound the process and confirm the unit of analysis"},{"expectedOutputs":[{"description":"As-Is process, stage owners, waiting and rework inventory.","kind":"current-state-map"}],"id":"M1L7","instructions":"Reconstruct the actual stages, owners, systems, queues, decisions, rework loops and handoff delays using documents, samples and interviews. Capture at least approximate processing and waiting time by stage, clearly labeled measured or estimated. If process-mapper is installed and its input format fits available data, use its mapping and cycle-time tools; otherwise produce a simple swimlane and table yourself. Validate with a frontline participant and document exceptions. Gate: the map agrees with observed work and distinguishes touch time from elapsed time.","resourceHints":[{"kind":"skill","ref":"github:alirezarezvani/claude-skills","selector":"business-operations/skills/process-mapper"}],"title":"Build an evidence-grounded current-state map"},{"expectedOutputs":[{"description":"Ranked bottleneck hypotheses, uncertainty and potential effect sizes.","kind":"constraint-analysis"}],"id":"MAIJ","instructions":"Analyze stage distribution, cycle-time percentiles where data permits, work-in-progress, rework rate, capacity mismatch and error/exception types. Avoid adding stage P90 values as though they were necessarily an observed end-to-end P90; note any approximations. Rank candidate constraints by impact on throughput or quality, and test against cases that moved quickly. For scarce data, use a structured hypothesis and specify which timestamps to collect next. Gate: the proposed bottleneck has evidence and an alternative explanation has been considered.","resourceHints":[],"title":"Quantify the binding constraint and failure modes"},{"expectedOutputs":[{"description":"To-Be alternatives, rationale, risks and estimated impact.","kind":"future-state-options"}],"id":"1KSL","instructions":"Generate at least two options such as eliminating approvals, clarifying decision rights, reducing batches, automating repetitive checks or improving input quality. Show changed process flow, ownership, exceptions, required system changes, compliance consequences and potential new failure modes. Estimate effect and cost with transparent assumptions, identifying trade-offs and local optimizations that do not relieve the overall constraint. Gate: options can be compared on value, feasibility, risk and adoption burden.","resourceHints":[],"title":"Design feasible alternative workflows"},{"expectedOutputs":[{"description":"Future-state process, intervention ranking and measurable pilot plan.","kind":"redesign-proposal"}],"id":"1NYL","instructions":"Prioritize a reversible intervention against the constraint and specify a pilot cohort, baseline, duration, owners, leading indicators, quality guardrails and explicit rollback/stop rules. Review design with process owner and affected staff; document actual approval status. Do not claim cycle-time improvements until measured after change. Deliver the validated future-state process and testable rollout recommendation, with no mandatory generic handoff ritual. Gate: the business owner can approve a bounded pilot or request targeted additional evidence.","resourceHints":[],"title":"Choose a pilot and an operating change"}],"title":"Diagnose and Redesign a Business Process"}