Current State Scripts
“Complexity is a silent killer.”
The theater world knows that a script is essential to guide and ensure that actors do and say what’s necessary to tell the story. Your organization is no different. To ensure your organization has a common understanding of the current customer experience and current employee experience, you need a Current State Script (CSS). This script is best with two columns to capture the actor and their action.
For manual activity, the actor is a human being. For automated activity, the actor is a system. If it’s difficult to get started, make a recording of someone describing the process, then translate the recording into a sequence of steps. Before attempting to draft a process flow, take this simple script as far as you can. Separate scripts for processes that are not frequent (monthly or quarterly) from processes that are highly fluid (hourly).
When your organization is pursuing innovation of the customer experiences with the most acute pain and misery, the CSS is the place to confront this and document it. The CSS is the place for the worst of the Customer Journey to appear. Only with this transparency can the ensemble isolate and fix problems in a prioritized, sustainable manner. Documenting a Current State Script is likely one of the most controversial, politically sensitive, and inflammatory parts of the Elegance methodology.
The ideal time to write CSS is before the time pressures of a formalized project.
Upstream Assets: Current State Inventory, System Actor Inventory
Downstream Assets: Current State Process Flows