Process models -v- dynamic models – related but different

Here’s a challenge – a business needs to hire 40 people for a new team. So it follows a simple process to do that.

Process diagram ... place job advert, screen applications, issue job offers, receive acceptances, check if enough have been hired, if so, stop hiring - if not, pace another job advert
Note that the items in this diagram are nearly all verbs, defining what is done to the job applications.

Note that the items in this diagram are nearly all verbs, defining what is done to the job applications.

Now here’s a dynamic model of exactly the same process:

View of a dynamic model of the same process, showing numbers of applications at each stage growing and declining as they move through the system over 15 weeks, nearly reaching the hiring target

In this diagram, every item is a noun , defining – and quantifying – the things themselves (the job applications) on which the processes act.

I humbly submit that the dynamic model is much more useful:

  • it tells you how much of every item there is, at all times

  • it tells you how long the hiring effort will take, and how fast everything will be happening

  • … so for example, you know how much work the HR folk will be doing on each activity, at all times

  • it can tell you the impact of changed decisions or uncertainties, like making offers to a larger fraction of applicants or receiving fewer than expected acceptances

  • … and it still gives a visual description of the process, even if it does not name the activities as the process model does.

So it’s curious, then, that process models are ubiquitous, while dynamic models are still virtually unknown?

Maybe we can change that!

Go try this hiring model for yourself – it’s at sdl.re/hiringprocess.

 


Learn to build these powerful, visual models for any initiative, challenge or plan in our Core dynamic modeling course. Followers get 1/3 off the price, either for the full course or the “essentials” short course – enter ‘blog33’ at checkout.

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