A visualization everyone understands

Anyone who coordinates processes in an administration knows this moment. You sit down with a department, everyone talks about the same process, and each of them has a different one in mind. The Municipality of Vaduz solves this with one picture everyone looks at.

Starting point

In the municipal administration, many procedures run across several offices. When a process is to be adjusted or set up anew, it is discussed and decided with the departments. These conversations lacked a guide. Nothing showed which step was being discussed and where a decision was due.

Without that picture, every conversation turns into a comparison of assumptions. What one side takes for granted is still open for the other. Who is responsible for what often only becomes clear afterwards.

People who decide together need to have the same thing in front of them. A decision is only as clear as the point it refers to.

Why aiio

The municipality weighs alternatives before it commits. It was looking for a tool that lets anyone lay out a process quickly and clearly enough for everyone to read, without prior knowledge. Just as important was a counterpart who understands the task.

What tipped the balance was that both came together. The tool could be used without a long learning curve. The first contact quickly turned into a personal conversation, and that into support beyond the rollout, with a training session for the team and later a refresher. So when asked about the biggest unexpected benefit, the municipality names the people it got to know at aiio.

Approach

The municipality started with a single process, without a big modeling project first.

1. Set up the process as a swimlane. Each office gets its own lane, each step sits with the role responsible for it. At a glance you can see where a procedure moves from one department to the next. That a swimlane can be set up simply and quickly is what the municipality names as the most helpful part.
2. Take the picture into the conversation. The swimlane is the guide the municipality had been looking for. It is on the table whenever a department is consulted. Instead of comparing assumptions, you point to the step in question and decide right there.
3. Keep building as a team. Process by process, this has grown into a body of work the team develops and discusses together. Fitting it into everyday work was, in the municipality’s words, simply easy.

Outcome

The first process has since become dozens, developed and discussed as a team. That has changed everyday work in several ways.

Conversations have a structure. Every conversation with a department starts from the same picture. People talk about a specific step rather than the process in general, and at the end it is clear what was decided and whose move it is next.

Projects start from a shared baseline. When an initiative affects several offices, the process in question is already set up and discussed. The project can start straight away with what should change. Nobody has to piece together first how things work today.

Everything is in one place. The processes are gathered in one place instead of being spread across files, minutes and individual people’s heads. The next conversation picks up where the last one left off, and an agreed change goes straight into the picture.

Knowledge stays with the administration. Anyone taking over a process for the first time, whether new to the team or standing in for a colleague, sees at a glance which steps lie with whom and where the handovers are. Nobody has to ask around first.

Over time, the picture for a single conversation has become a shared resource the team keeps coming back to.

“We were missing a visualization that everyone understands. Today we have a clearer structure in our projects and conversations.”

Who this is for

The pattern works wherever processes aren’t in one pair of hands, for example in administrations where a procedure passes through several offices, or in organizations where a central team coordinates processes with the business units.

You’ll recognize the situation when everyone in the meeting talks about the same process but each side means a different one, and afterwards it’s unclear what the decision referred to. Without a shared picture, that conversation starts from scratch every time. A single process is enough to change that.