Venn diagram? Process map? Swim lane?

November 8, 2023 9:05 AM

We collect a lot of data at my org, using several different methods/apps/software/etc. What we don't have is a centralized document listing what the source is, who owns it, when the evaluation/survey/questionnaire goes out, who it impacts in our org, whether it is state or federally mandated (e.g. after school programs and the like), and where the results go for analysis.

My brain would be fine with an Excel sheet. Others don't think that way, and that's fine, but I am having difficulty visualizing what that sort of document would look like and/or how to best go about finding out which of the hundreds of templates and apps and whatnot will help me get all the info in one place.

I think maybe a swim lane process map is what I'm looking for but all the examples I see kind of confuse me. Is a flowchart the way to go? Should I just start on a white board with the tool, who owns it, etc., and maybe the best solution will reveal itself to me?

Bonus points for a tool that I can display in MicroSoft Teams, Google Suite, or on the free version of Monday.com.

Help.

posted by anonymous to Grab Bag (10 answers total)

From what I know if it, Monday is more for getting specific work done, not so much for documentation.

I like the idea of starting on the white board. As you sketch out each dataset, you'll start to see commonalities. Those could become columns on a spreadsheet or shown in another way, like on a flowchart.

If the different datasets don't overlap then it seems like a Google doc for each one, all in one folder would do the trick. You can include tables in those so you could have the best of both worlds in terms of laying out the data. But you wouldn't have the functionality you'd have in Excel of things like sorting and filtering.

If the datasets do overlap then you could still do a google doc (or word doc) for each one and then have a spreadsheet for the high level stuff so you could see all the main info at a glance.
posted by dawkins_7 at 9:17 AM on November 8, 2023

My org is now pushing confluence for this. Previously one successful similar implementation was an embedded spreadsheet maintained regularly by two people who updated it as a key work product for their department.

The tool doesn’t matter much as once you have the data in a table, you can give people different ways to view, sort and search.

Put your effort into figuring out who will create and most importantly update this. Do they have time and interest to maintain it? Will this work be recognised by their manager as a good use of their time or is it thankless effort? Who will review dead links and do the grunt work of finding where the document now is?

Other questions are: Who decides how it gets organised - centralised top-down organisation or a folksonomy through user-tags? Are you allowing any kind of content link or only certain document types? Can users comment or add links or only an approved pool of editors? What about security - you don’t want people adding documents that might be technically inaccessible but have revealing titles like “J.T’s disciplinary review”, etc.

If it can’t be maintained, it will link rot fast and be a waste of effort.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:34 AM on November 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

1. It sounds like there are many dimensions of information you want to keep track of. Excel is good for 2 dimensions. So maybe you want something that's backed by a relational database. You can work up something in the free tier of Airtable, for example, so you can slice and dice along all those dimensions. Based on my limited understanding of Monday.com, you could do it there too, but it's not really designed for it.

2. What the right tool is will depend on what purpose you're using it for. Do you just need an all-in-one overview of a lot of disparate information? A simple list-of-lists in text form works for that. Do you need something to keep you on schedule?
posted by adamrice at 10:39 AM on November 8, 2023

From your description an [Excel] spreadsheet might be fine. I don't think you want swim lanes, those are usually best when modeling a process that consists of a series of steps performed by multiple participants.

I would try whipping up a draft excel sheet, either for real on the computer or on a whiteboard. start with just a few rows and the bare minimum columns. See how far you can get with a simple table of rows and columns, with one row per data source you want to track.

If you have a column that really needs more than one value per row, you can start a new tab for just that column. Let's say more than own person can be impacted by a particular source. you could handle that on a new tab by having one column with the source, and one with the impacted person. For example:

Source, Impacted Person
Gallup Poll, Joe
Gallup Poll, Pat
Phone Survey, Andy
Social Media, Joe
Social Media, Bobby
Social Media, Gale
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 9:08 PM on November 8, 2023

The org's needs could be met with a spreadsheet (or a relational database...e.g. Monday.com).

But I agree with your assessment that Excel is a good place to start. Excel is ubiquitous, not going anywhere, and generally accessible to individuals with disabilities. Moreover, there will be less resistance to keep the file updated if the software is familiar. Spreadsheets can also be used as a foundation for dashboards or metrics. It's also pretty easy to find the data needed by using filters and color coding.

Based on what you described I would create the following columns:
Survey Name
(Year)
(Survey type): e.g. student, school
Source
Owner1
Owner2
Administration Start Date (date column)
Administration End Date (date column)
Stakeholders [depending on how standardized these options are, I might create separate (yes/no) columns for each stakeholder... e.g. Stakeholder: Marketing Department, Stakeholder: Finance Department]
State Mandated (yes/no)
Federally Mandated (yes/no)
Analysis Destination

Form and ActiveX controls can be kludgy, but are an option. Creating a drop down list (or even the standardized use of X or y (for yes) can be helpful for yes/no columns).
posted by oceano at 2:21 AM on November 9, 2023

You want a manifest and not an aggregate of current data sources so that people might chase for updates when content looks stale?

PowerBI and Tableau are common tools for visualising pooled data. Live data plus who to go get it updated when it looks stale -- send like a win.
posted by k3ninho at 6:33 AM on November 9, 2023

You could make Notion do this.
posted by Miko at 7:27 AM on November 9, 2023

Look into the concept of “data flow diagram” and “data map”, from business analysis. There’s a whole world of ways to do this.
posted by Valancy Rachel at 7:37 AM on November 9, 2023

One thing I've been finding really useful lately is lists in sharepoint. It's exactly what most people use Excel for (because they don't have complicated related tables), and it's way easier to share and let others keep updated without them having to find some file and edit it.

I would start with a single list with columns for exactly what you listed there, and then play-test it for a while to see what would help. Right off the bat people would be able to sort columns and filter by their name, etc.
posted by ctmf at 11:05 PM on November 9, 2023

Oh and you can pin a sharepoint list directly in your Teams team.
posted by ctmf at 11:05 PM on November 9, 2023