Your process diagram is a starting point.

A diagram captures an understanding of a process at a moment in time. Before using it to design a change, I want to know whether it describes the work people actually do.

Ask someone to walk through a normal request and a difficult one. Where does the information come from? Who decides what happens next? What lives in a spreadsheet, an email thread, or a notebook beside the official system? Those details often explain the delays customers and teams experience.

The workaround may be doing something useful. Understand why it exists before replacing it. An informal message might compensate for a missing approval path; a personal tracker might hold the only reliable view of progress.

Bring those observations back to the people involved. A better process should preserve what works, clarify ownership, and make the next step easier to see. The diagram becomes useful when it reflects that shared understanding.