As a business analyst, you're adept at helping companies refine existing business processes or improve those they already follow. But to truly help the company you serve, you'll need to ensure that your ideas are implemented.

Enter the world of work process timelines. Your research and communication skills will help ensure that you build schedules that are understandable, workable and measurable. Here's how to get started.

Develop an Understanding

Before you can map out the future, you must examine the present. Business process modeling gives you a complete understanding of what your company is doing right now, and you can use those insights as you build process timelines.

BPMN (business process model and notation) is considered the industry standard for business process mapping, writes Amit Kothari, CEO of workflow software provider Tallyfy. "It’s essentially a standardized method for flowchart mapping," he says.

A BPMN uses graphical representations for activities such as events, tasks, sequences, and deliverables. Put all of those symbols together, and you have a birds-eye view of the process you're revising.

The team at workflow automation provider Kissflow says BPMN is a learned language. As a business analyst, you’ll understand a representation of an organization’s business processes. A regular business user, however, might need help in interpreting the data.

The more complex your work process, the more detailed your BPMN. Breaking it into different graphical representations allows stakeholders to understand the scope of the project. You have plenty of options available.

For example, Zack Kushner at online diagram software Gliffy says swimlane diagrams illustrate how teams of contributors work on a project during different stages. "That may sound complicated, but in practice swimlanes and swimlane diagrams are an elegant way to un-complicate diagrams that would otherwise be overly complex," he explains.

At the end of your research, you should have a good understanding of what the company is doing now and how a revision to existing processes or implementation of new processes would help.

Create a Blueprint

Methodical planning leads to a schedule that is clear and easy for your team to follow. Here's your roadmap.

Define Your Team

Technical expertise and current roles may help you understand critical players, but workload should also play a role. If key members of your team are too busy to hit their deadlines, your project may develop bottlenecks, says Ellen Williams, director of advisory solutions at Orion Global Solutions.

Look for ways to reduce or shift existing work or remove that person from the process.

Determine Key Steps

Identify the work required as the process revision moves forward. Be as detailed as possible: You'll need to incorporate all of those elements into your schedule. Then, ask for help to validate your ideas.

Tom Kuczmarski, president and founder of management consultancy Kuczmarski Innovation, recommends building a cross-functional team made up of people that tackle different parts of the process. Ask them to look over your plans and give feedback. Are there steps you're missing? Would another idea work better?

Develop a Schedule

With your research completed, it's time to craft a step-by-step schedule your team can understand and support. A project planning tool, like MS Project, helps you create a task for each step you've defined during your research, writes Kathleen O'Brien, lead business analyst at Merck.

Assign Tasks

As you build your schedule, you'll assign tasks to team members. Take a step back and examine just how many tasks you've allocated to one person at any given time. If you put too much on one person's to-do list, you could create future problems.

"Limit the number of tasks allocated to a team member at any time to encourage deep focus work and high-quality results," writes Grace Windsor at project management application BrightWork.

Examine the Flow

Think hard about the flow of work from start to finish. You may have tasks that seem ready to start now, but need to hold back for a bit.

"In many cases, projects involve tasks that cannot begin until a prerequisite task is completed. Dependencies define the relationship between different tasks throughout a project," says tech writer David Zomaya.

Revisit completed plans with fresh eyes. You may see dependencies and logjams on a second review.

Create Collaboration Opportunities

Your team has tasks to complete and deliverables to address. But they can't do work in isolation. One person's decisions could impact another.

Consider rework. Zeb Geary, principal consultant at product development platform Jama Software, explains that rework appears when teams get through a core task only to discover that their work isn't quite right. "To avoid or at least reduce rework, teams must define, agree, and then develop. The more teams can align around what it is you’re actually building and just how that thing will be verified, the better aligned development activities will be," he writes.

Carve out time for meetings and checkpoints in your schedule to encourage all participants to collaborate and stay informed.

Prepare for Revisions

Despite all of your hard work and planning, you may need to revisit your schedule more than once as the project moves forward.

"It’s impossible to create the perfect project schedule on the first attempt," writes Jason Westland, founder and CEO of ProjectManager.com. As the project changes, and scope is added or removed, new deadlines will come and go.

Make sure your schedule reflects the reality of your project, and update as often as required to keep your team informed.

Limit Scope Creep

At project kickoff, your goal is clearly defined. But as work progresses, your team may add seemingly small elements to your clean plans. That could lead to schedule slowdowns, missed deadlines and team frustration.

"Business analysts can contribute to clear scope with effective requirements elicitation and by analyzing and documenting clear, complete, and concise requirements," explain Richard Larson and Elizabeth Larson at Project Management Institute.

Ensure that your team has access to all of your research, and be prepared to explain the details if questions arise. The clearer the goal, the less enticing distractions might become to the team.

Additionally, your team should come into the project with a sense of collaboration and problem-solving. "Most successful projects are enabled by teams that work well together," writes Suzanna Haworth, digital project director. Facilitate conversations that include the whole team. When one person makes a request or shares a concern, bring the topic up for group discussion.

If stakeholders outside the team have requests, solicit feedback from the group. But remember to validate these ideas against your core research. "Some stakeholders might demand features that are out of the project scope and the business analyst should highlight any such requirements," writes team at The Business Analyst. Don't be afraid to point to your kickoff research to push back against pet features that could derail your work.

Measure Progress with Analytics

Process mining software gives you an intense amount of data. Use it to monitor orders, delivery, payments, manufacturing and returns. Some programs will even outline how long each step takes, who completes it and the variables that slow down or speed up the process.

"Every piece of information that flows through a business today generates its own digital trail, creating a plethora of data revealing where the information went and when," Jung Paik and Jonathan Silver write at McKinsey and Company.

This data allows you to validate the effectiveness of process changes as they roll out. If a shift isn't delivering the outcome you predicted, you can make a quick course correction to help your company move forward.

Process mining tools aren't perfect for all companies or situations. "Organizations will get the best value from applying it to processes that have been digitized (i.e. supported by an IT system) and where there is still some unstructured work (i.e. reviews and approvals) that happen outside the IT system," advise Thomas H. Davenport and Andrew Spanyi at Harvard Business Review.

However, the granular data available to you through process mining software could be just what you need to complete the current project and prepare for the work to come.

Project Management Tools

There are many tools available online for Project Managers to use for project tracking. Quincy from ProjectManager.com shared his organization’s tool for online project management. When choosing at tool is best to evaluate how well the tool will fit into your organization’s culture and how well it will meet your needs for project management.

How to Set Realistic Timelines and Track the Value of New Processes