Your Process Documentation Is Wrong. Your Data Already Knows the Real One.
Every company has two processes: the one it documents, and the one its data proves actually happens.
- What people saythe intended design
- What the data showsthe real behavior
- Where they disagreethe actual finding
Documentation goes stale the moment it's written.
Teams adapt to real constraints: a missing field, a slow approval, a tool that doesn't fit. The workaround becomes the process. Nobody updates the diagram.
This breaks worst at the seams between systems. A deal moves from CRM to finance to contract. Each handoff has its own naming, its own quiet exceptions. No one team sees the whole path.
Interviews and data, alone, both miss it.
People describe the job as designed, not as lived, not hiding anything, just no longer noticing the workaround. Raw data has no ground truth to check against; a mismatch means nothing until you know what it was supposed to look like.
The method: compare, don't choose.
Stated process, from interviews and documentation. Recorded data, pulled directly from the systems of record. A comparison layer that checks the two against each other, handoff by handoff. Agreement confirms. Disagreement is the finding.
The output is a map of the business as it actually runs, not the one anyone intended to draw.
What this buys you.
Evidence of where the process breaks, before committing to fix or replace anything.