The ‘happy path‘ is a term that we use within process mapping to describe the way the process operates if it works perfectly.
Think of the ideal route through your process – with no errors, delays or deviations – and you have your happy path.
We sometimes refer to it as the ‘clean path‘ as this avoids comments along the lines of ‘there’s nothing happy about this process’, but the principle is the same.
When documenting a process, it makes sense to try to document the happy path first of all. It helps avoid the distractions of mapping the deviations and builds up a clear picture of the end-to-end process. Note where the deviations can occur and then go back and document those once you have the happy path completed.
It might sound obvious, but the step of going back and documenting the deviations, workarounds etc. is critical. We’ve encountered many businesses who have developed automations based solely on the happy path and are then surprised when people still need to perform manual work due to the process elements they haven’t accounted for.