Flow mapping for delivery teams
Most work spends its life waiting.
Flow Mapper turns a whiteboard exercise into a shared map. Write your steps as text, estimate active and waiting time, and see where the delay actually sits before you try to fix it.
No account needed to build one. Sign up free to save up to three and export them.
Typical first map
25%
of lead time is active work
Four steps to a map
About forty minutes with the team
01
Write out the process
One activity per line, from the customer's request to value delivered. Plain text — no dragging boxes around a canvas.
02
Estimate active time
The time a person is genuinely working on the step, not the time it sat in someone's queue first.
03
Estimate the waiting
Approvals, handovers, meetings, queues. Flow Mapper adds it up and works out your flow efficiency as you type.
04
Name the blockers
Mark what holds each step up, and whether it's yours to fix. That list is your improvement backlog.
The canvas
Idea to production · Payments squad
| Step | Request | Triage | Design | Build | Review | Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active | 2h | 4h | 1d | 3d | 2h | 1h |
| Waiting | 3d | 5d | 2d | 1d | 4d | None |
| Blockers | Queue | Approval |
You never draw this. You write the process as text and Flow Mapper lays it out, keeps the arithmetic honest, and exports the result as draw.io XML, SVG or PNG.
Flow efficiency, in one line
Active time ÷ total time × 100
Total time is everything from the request to the delivery, waiting included. Most teams measure their active time carefully and never measure the gaps between it, which is where the majority of the calendar goes.
Once the waiting is visible, the improvements pick themselves: the biggest delay you can actually do something about.
Under 15%
Critical
The process is mostly queue. Look at handoffs and approval gates first.
15 to 40%
Typical
Where most first maps land. Batch size and work in progress are the usual levers.
Over 40%
Strong
Delay is no longer the constraint. Question whether every step adds value.
Map your first process.
Start in the browser with no account at all. When you want to keep it or export it to draw.io, create a free account — you get three saved maps.