A good friend of mine wanted to find out how a customer application process worked in his department. He didn’t grab his notebook and interview his colleagues. He didn’t draw up elaborate as-is process flows in Visio. He didn’t even write one word of documentation. Instead, he did something much more effective – he went through the application process himself.
14 letters and 5 weeks later, my friend had conclusive evidence of how the process worked, along with a set of recommendations on how to improve it.