No process is constant, it will have many variations. Some of these variations are by design and others are by lack of process consistency. One of the critical decisions in capturing process information is to decide on the most appropriate design conditions for your project.

Essentially the design conditions represent the situation under which you are going to collect information. Here are some questions that your need to ask yourself about the selection of design conditions:

1. Under what degree of “stress” do you want to observe the process? For example, you may want to investigate the process when it is at peak utilization. In other case, you may want to observe the process under normal conditions.
2. Can you limit your process study by observing only the “20%” of the process that is the most significant?
3. If the process information is vast, can you sample the information to reduce your effort? If yes, how will you sample this information?

Once you answer these questions, you should have a better idea of how to select the conditions under which you want to observe the process.