SIPOC Workshop — Usability
When to Implement
Each of the following Scenarios can be used to determine if now is the right time for you to conduct a SIPOC Workshop.
Process Improvement Project: A new initiative is kicking off, and the team needs to understand where the process begins and ends. This helps define the scope early and avoid unnecessary work later.
Onboarding New Team Members: A new hire is joining the team and needs to get up to speed quickly. This gives them a clear, high-level view of how the process works and who’s involved.
Misalignment: Teams are unclear about roles, responsibilities, or handoffs. This helps clarify who provides what, what inputs are needed, and who the process ultimately serves.
Before Detailed Process Mapping: The team is preparing to dive into tools like value stream maps. This step ensures everyone is aligned before getting into the details.
Designing a New Process: A new process is being built from scratch, and it’s important to make sure nothing critical is missed. This helps identify all key elements—suppliers, inputs, outputs, and customers—right from the start.
Communication Across Departments: Different teams need to understand how their work connects. This helps bridge gaps and shows how each group contributes to the overall process.
Prerequisites
Process Boundaries – Start and end points of the process must be clearly defined before mapping anything out.
Existing Documentation – Gather any current process maps, SOPs, or workflow diagrams that describe how the process works today.
Performance Metrics – Include any KPIs or metrics that help measure how well the process is performing.
Customer List – Identify internal and external customers who receive the outputs of the process.
Supplier List – List out the suppliers (internal or external) who provide the necessary inputs to the process.
Input Examples – Collect real examples of inputs like forms, materials, or data that kick off the process.
Output Examples – Include samples of outputs such as reports, products, or services that result from the process.
Roles & Responsibilities
Facilitator: takes an unbiased approach to the workshop, ensuring collaboration, clarifying scores and applying criteria consistently to each item in the list. Typically a Release Train Engineer, a Portfolio Manager, a Scrum Master, or someone equipped in leadership facilitates the SIPOC Workshop.
Pro-Tip: Having a Leader or Individual Contributor, who is really close to the work, facilitate the SIPOC can result in conflict and a biased outcome. Look for someone outside of the work to facilitate, especially for the first time.
Process Owner: ensures alignment with business goals and provides authoritative insight into the process scope, purpose, and performance expectations. Their context helps prioritize improvements and clarify ownership of outcomes.
Pro-Tip:
Cross-Functional Team Representatives: bring diverse perspectives from each department involved in the process. Their context ensures accurate mapping of handoffs, dependencies, and pain points across the workflow.
Pro-Tip:
Subject Matter Experts: provide clarifying details on specific items in the list, ensuring the item is well-understood by everyone involved. They often provide business impact, dependencies, and technical feasibility.
Pro-Tip:
Customer Representative (Internal or External): provides the voice of the customer, clarifying expectations, satisfaction drivers, and quality criteria. Their insights help define what “value” looks like from the end-user’s perspective.
Pro-Tip:
Supplier Representative (Internal or External): offers clarity on input quality, availability, and delivery mechanisms. Their context helps assess risks, constraints, and opportunities for upstream improvements.
Pro-Tip:
NOTE: Recommended Headcount: 6-10 people. Including additional people typically slows down the process without significantly improving the relative scoring and outcomes of the SIPOC Workshop.
Scheduling and Timeline
A SIPOC workshop should be used when no clear understanding of the end-to-end process exists, and/or when there are concerns about misalignment between stakeholders, unclear inputs/outputs, or inconsistent customer expectations.
Key times to consider a SIPOC Workshop for large programs and portfolios:
- After a list of processes or major workflows has been identified and 4+ weeks prior to major planning events or transformation efforts.
This timing allows teams to clarify scope, roles, and dependencies before diving into detailed planning or solutioning. - On a regular, but infrequent basis – Quarterly, Semi-annually or Annually. Processes evolve, and so do suppliers, inputs, and customer needs. Conduct a SIPOC workshop as often as needed to reflect organizational changes, new technologies, or shifts in strategic direction.
Ideally, a SIPOC workshop precedes downstream work by 2–4 weeks.
This buffer allows teams to validate assumptions, align on terminology, and identify areas needing deeper analysis before breaking down work into tasks or stories.
Consulting Effort
If you are a consultant, understanding the amount of effort to conduct a SIPOC session might inform how much time you reserve, and how much you charge for it. For those of you that do Value-Based contracts, the value the company receives from a SIPOC session will vary considerably.
For organizations, working on the wrong item first can be quite expensive, and struggling to make a decision on where to start can be even more costly.
🔓 Consultant A Consultant Subscription is required to view this section. Please Login or Subscribe.