Modelling real-world complexity

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Process modelling isn’t about making complex work look simple. It’s about making the complexity understandable. Five principles:

Model the work as it is done, not as it should be. Keep the exceptions and workarounds that matter; simplify by grouping steps, not by leaving things out.
Keep the flow for the order of work. Rules, exceptions, controls and requirements go on the steps, so the diagram stays readable.
Make the boundaries clear. Link each hand-off to the process it comes from or goes to.
Tell what’s needed from what could go. Some complexity the business needs (an award, a law); some is left over from the past. Mark the second kind so it can be improved, not just copied.
Write down what only people know. Note who knows how an awkward case is handled before they move on.

Go only as deep as each process needs: a process map for the big picture, flows for the work, and the detail on the steps where the risk or the change is.

Where each thing goes, on a step:

Business rule: a criterion every case follows (“loans over $1m need two approvers”). Kept in the Business rules register and reused.
Requirement: an obligation the step must meet (a law, a policy, a customer promise).
Exception or workaround: a group of cases the usual way doesn’t fit, and what people actually do (“staff on the 1998 agreement are paid by hand”). Local to the step and often unwritten.
A branch in the flow: only when the work genuinely goes somewhere else.

To record one, right-click a step › Properties… › Exceptions. Say what’s done instead and, if the knowledge sits with few people, who knows it. Tick Could go when the business doesn’t need it. Pin the section if you want it in the side panel. The AI asks about exceptions only once the main flow is in place.

More on getting started

Try it in the free demo, or contact us.