In this blog entry I will be sharing something the delivery
team has been working on. (When we are
not doing the Delivery side of our job) We have been documenting processes and putting
them into a usable form. The document needed to be flexible because Fellowship
One is very flexible and constantly improving how churches work with
individuals. We landed on Swim Lane documents.
Since the
Olympics are on
right now, and I think
Michael
Phelps is winning something in the water as I write this, you should know
what a swim lane is. For our purposes we
are attempting to show how a task, such as working a contact from beginning to
end, flows from one person to another across those swim lanes. The first document was penned by Will
Steed. He has been a Delivery Manager at
Fellowship Technologies for a while now and comes from a consulting
background. Click the picture below to download the document.
The top of the document is the Swim Lane. This represents
how the contact flows from the Congregation to the Data Entry Team and on to
the Staff. If you are the entire staff
at your church, just switch your hat around and pretend you are the data entry
team for a short period of time.
The bottom portion of the document should give you best
practice tips for each of the blocks in the Swim Lane. This is not meant to be a training document
or to walk you through how something is done step by step in Fellowship
One. We have a Bill Wheaton for that
task. You can find him and the rest of
the Education Department on the Education
tab. Where Bill stops we try and pick up
with the "which is the best way to do this task".
Towards the end of Will's Process the Card Swim Lane it
leaves off with "Working the Contact Begins".
This can take on different work flows based on what type of contact you
are processing. In the example below I
describe how contacts can work when fully utilizing the Small Groups Manager in
Fellowship One. I tried to make it
generic but I was thinking of using the Small Group Manager for Care ministries
when I wrote the document. You can get
more information on why you might want to use the Small Group Manager to
coordinate care ministry activities HERE. Again, clicking the picture of the document will download it for your review.
You are the first to be exposed to our new Swim Lane
documents so I would really appreciate some constructive feedback. Nothing like "Will Steed is a silly name", or
"I don't
like blue font colors". Don't
forget my ego is easily bruised or bolstered so feel free to say "Matt, you're
the best". For those who are eager to
get their hands on these documents, know that we have a dozen swim lane
documents created already, but we want to get your feedback on format before we
hand them out.
Matthew McMaster
Delivery Manager and Document Producer