How to Capture Ad-Hoc Ideas with Brainstorm Diagram?

Capturing Ideas with Brainstorming

Imagine you're setting up a car dealership and have a lot of ideas about how the business should run. To avoid losing any of them, it's a good idea to write them down. Here's how you can capture all your ideas:

1. Create a new project by selecting Project > New from the application toolbar. In the New Project window, enter Tutorial as the project name and click Create Blank Project.
2. Create a brainstorm diagram by selecting Diagram > New from the application toolbar. In the New Diagram window, select Brainstorm and click Next.
   
3. Enter Buy a car as the diagram name and click OK to create the diagram.
   
4. Now, select a sticky note from the diagram toolbar and place it on the corkboard.
   
5. Write down your ideas, for example, Customer.
   
   Note that you don't need to write a full paragraph to record your ideas; short phrases or even single words are enough to remind you of what you were thinking.
6. Repeat these steps to create the following sticky notes:

   Ideas
   sales
   factory
   dealer
   help user arrange financing
   place order
   perform registration
   prepare for delivery
   deliver car to customer
   order from factory if no stock

   
   * You can use sticky notes of different colors to categorize your ideas at a high level.
   

Tagging Your Ideas into Categories

Although your ideas are written on sticky notes, they are still just simple words. To better understand their different natures and transform them into a design later on, you need to categorize them. Here's how to do it:

1. Select a sticky note, for example, customer.
2. Click on the Tag button at the bottom-left corner of the note.
   
3. Since Customer is a participant in the process of buying a car, choose participant here.
   
4. Repeat these steps for the rest of the sticky notes.

   Note	Tag
   sales	Participant
   factory	Participant
   dealer	Participant
   help user arrange financing	Task
   place order	Task
   perform registration	Task
   prepare for delivery	Task
   deliver car to customer	Task
   order from factory if no stock	Decision

Visualizing Your Ideas as a Business Process

Once your ideas are tagged, you can use our magic wand to transform them into a process design. Here's how to transform the ideas on your sticky notes into a design:

1. Select a sticky note, for example, customer.
2. Click on the tag and select Realize > Pool.
   
3. The Transit Model Element window will appear, where you can make any necessary adjustments before continuing. For example, you can give a more meaningful name to the element you're creating.
   
4. Click OK in the Transit Model Element window.
5. Select Create new diagram in the Visualize Model Element window and name the diagram Buy a car.
   
   The customer note has now been transformed into a pool in your Buy a car process diagram.
   
6. Repeat these steps for Dealer and Factory. This time, select Show in existing diagram and choose Buy a car in the Visualize Model Element window.
   
7. For the sales note, select Realize > Lane from the popup menu of the tag.
   
8. In the Select Parent Pool/Lane window, choose Dealer as its parent pool and click OK to continue.
   
9. Since we're focusing on the process of attracting customers in a car dealership, the internal operations of Customer and Factory are not our main concern. To simplify the diagram, let's change them to black box pools by right-clicking on them and selecting Black Box.
   
10. Follow the steps we took previously to realize it into a Buy a car process diagram.
11. Once we've realized all the participants, we can move on to realizing tasks and gateways. Repeat the steps above to realize the remaining sticky notes.
12. We can then lay out the diagram right after we've realized all of them.
    
    Finally, your process design has been realized from your ideas, and it will be the starting point for your success.

Watch This Tutorial on YouTube

Here is the video version of this tutorial.