The following example questions can be used to prompt an internal discussion and drive curiosity about things you may not have previously considered relevant or important. Understanding the answers to these questions will position you well for commencement of a formal discovery effort.

People

• Do team members have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities?

• Do team members feel empowered to make decisions?

• How do team members accommodate colleague absence? What are the expectations of your team in times of personal crisis or emergency?

• Does your team feel that workloads and responsibilities are equitably distributed? How do you know?

• What mechanisms does your team utilize to provide feedback to each other? To leadership?

• How does leadership communicate expectations to team members? Are expectations set collaboratively?

• How are career paths defined? Who has ownership of defining a career path?

• How is appreciation shown? And how is the showing of appreciation encouraged?

• How and where are organizational values and vision expressed? Do team members feel inspired by organizational values and vision? How do you know?

• Are hiring practices equitable? Do you have a clear understanding as to how to measure this?

Process

• Are workflows clearly documented? If so, how often are these documents reviewed and updated?

• Do you understand any and all up- and down-stream dependencies? Do team members understand the importance of processes, as well as their place within the context of the broader organization?

• Do you understand all control points in your processes? If not, why not?

• Are there redundancies in your processes? If so, why?

• Is the priority of processes clearly understood? How does your organization prioritize processes?

• Do processes get interrupted on a recurring basis? If so, how are interruptions managed?

• What contingencies do you have in place to mitigate process disruption due to external conditions or circumstances?

• How do you ensure completion of a process? Does completion need to be documented in any way?

• Do processes result in some form of work product? If so, does the work product meet the organization’s needs? How is that work product evaluated and by whom?

Systems

• Does the team have a strong understanding of how systems support processes?

• Does the team have positive feelings about the system and its ability to support processes? If not, why not?

• How is training on supporting systems managed? Is training content reviewed and updated on a recurring basis? If so, what triggers the review?

• Are systems used consistently across the team? If not, why not?

• What percentage of systems’ capabilities do you believe your team utilizes in completing their processes?

• Are there any operational process gaps in supporting systems that must be managed manually? If so, describe the manual process(es)?

• Are systems supporting the processes integrated? Does duplicate entry of data or information occur?

• Have your systems been enhanced with any custom configuration or development? If so, who maintains those custom features and how are they maintained?

• How are systems issues handled within the organization? Is there a methodology for prioritizing systems issues, and is this methodology understood throughout the organization?