The landscape

The Landscape shows your company's main processes on one page, in groups, with their subprocesses one click away (see Subprocesses). Every organization starts with the groups auditors and consultants usually draw on a process map:

• Management processes at the top: strategy, management review, internal audit.
• Core processes in the middle, as a value chain from left to right: from the first customer contact to delivery and returns.
• Support processes at the bottom: what keeps the core running, such as HR, IT and purchasing.

If your company has its own process map, shape the landscape like it (see below). Each card shows the process number and name, its status, its owner and how many subprocesses it has. Within a group, processes are in number order, then by name. Click a card to open the process. A card with a dashed border is a placeholder: the process has a name, but nobody has described it yet.

Starting from suggestionsCopy Anchor Link

A new landscape doesn't have to start empty. Choose Suggest processes above the map and tell Steplane what your company does, such as Manufacturing or Wholesale and distribution, and which standards matter. Steplane suggests the processes companies like yours usually have, in management, core and support processes, with a short description of each. These suggestions are Steplane's own.

Uncheck what doesn't apply, choose which of your groups each kind goes in, and choose Add placeholders. The rest become placeholders: a name and a description, tagged with the ISO 9001 clauses they usually cover, so the Standards page already shows what's covered and what's missing. Processes you already have are left out. Describe the placeholders later, one by one or with Claude.

Claude can do the same in a conversation: "We're a wholesaler working towards ISO 9001. Set up our landscape." It asks what applies before it adds anything.

Your own groupsCopy Anchor Link

Owners, admins and editors choose Edit groups above the map to make the landscape match the map your employees and auditors know, for example Leadership, Value stream and Support. Changes save as you go and everyone sees them straight away.

• Rename a group and give it a short description.
• Choose how it's drawn: as a value chain from left to right, or as a grid of cards.
• Reorder groups with the arrows.
• Add sub-group splits a group, for example a value stream into Preparation and Execution. Sub-groups go one level deep and show inside their group. You can also move an existing group under another one.
• Remove a group once it's empty: move its processes to another group first (in each process's editor, or ask Claude).

Pick a process's group in its editor, or when you create it. Your AI assistant can change groups too.

SubprocessesCopy Anchor Link

A large company has hundreds of processes. The landscape stays readable by showing only the main ones: everything else sits under the process it belongs to, its home parent. Order handling might hold Credit check and Order confirmation, and Credit check might hold Credit limit review, as deep as your processes go.

• On a process page, Subprocesses lists what sits under it. Choose + there to add a new subprocess.
• To move an existing process under another one, pick its Home parent in its editor. Choose No parent to make it a main process again.
• The path at the top of a process page leads from its group through every home parent, so you always see where a process belongs.
• A process can't sit under itself or one of its own subprocesses.

A subprocess doesn't need a group of its own: it shows under its home parent, not on the map, even if it has one. A process used by several others, such as a credit check that sales and purchasing both run, still has one home parent; the others link to it with Uses.

Claude can place processes too: "Put Credit check under Order handling", or "Here are our 40 procedures for production; place each under the right process."

HighlightingCopy Anchor Link

Use the chips above the map to highlight drafts, placeholders, processes due for review, or improvements. The rest of the map fades so the highlighted processes stand out, and the map keeps its shape. A card also stays lit when one of its subprocesses matches.

Each card also shows the process's rung on the maturity ladder: described, right, connected, assisted or automated. Pick a rung in Any rung to light the processes on it, for example everything that's right but not yet connected.

The highlight is part of the page's address, so you can share a link that opens with it, for example to show a colleague every process due for review.

Unplaced processesCopy Anchor Link

You can describe processes in any order. A process that has neither a parent process nor a landscape group appears under Unplaced, next to the map. It works like any other process in the meantime. Suggestions for where an unplaced process belongs are coming; a person will always confirm where it goes.

StatusesCopy Anchor Link

A process's status comes from its content, so it's always current:

A published process with edits that haven't been published yet shows Unpublished changes next to its status.

Changes appear live: when a colleague or an AI assistant changes a process, the map and any open process page update without reloading.