Award Sounds

How would you process map a cup of tea?

I once had a recruiter vet me based on whether I could process map a cup of tea. I think he was new to the job and was fed a script from his client.

What's the actual answer?

Firstly, a cup of tea isn't a process. You can't map a cup of tea. It's an object, not a process. You can process map the process of making a cup of tea, but not the cup of tea itself.

Secondly, if we consider a cup of tea being a class in the Object Oriented world, it will include methods, probably including the instantiation (or create) method. Potentially that could be process mapped, but usually for a process map you'd want to incorporate the actors involved as well, in this case, the person making the cup of tea. I'd say that's better suited to a UML sequence diagram at a lower level than in a standard process map, whereas we should be looking at the UML Activity Diagram/BPMN process map if we want non-technical readers to be able to understand them.

What did he want to hear?

He wanted to hear me talk through the analysis of the process of making a cup of tea. That wasn't his question though. He wanted to hear how a person would have to find a cup, fill the kettle, etc.

This was for a health client and oddly enough, making a cup of tea is incredibly useful in assessing someone's capability. When you break it down, there are a lot of unconscious steps involved, e.g. is the kettle full? is it switched on? does the sugar go in first? where's the spoon? is the spoon clean? Watching someone make a cup of tea (or at least try to make a cup of tea) will tell a social worker or occupational therapist a lot about a person's capacity to function. That's why it was odd, because I don't believe the health-aspects of making a cup of tea were being considered.

What did he hear?

He heard both answers. I was non-confrontational in explaining the fact that a cup of tea is an object and so can't be processed, but then I moved quickly onto how you'd map the process of making a cup of tea. I kept the Object Oriented stuff out of the conversation since it was more of a business-level assignment, figuring it would complicate matters too much.