A team wanted an agent to route incoming requests. We asked them to walk one request from the inbox to done. It took four tools, two undocumented exceptions, and a person who said, quietly, that she just knows which ones to ignore. That knowledge was the process. It was not written down because writing it down would have started an argument.
They were about to encode the argument into software and call it efficiency.
draw it before you buy it
A usable map fits on one page. Trigger, steps, the decision in the middle, who owns the exception, and what done looks like. If the map needs a legend, you do not have a process yet. You have a truce.
Write the exceptions on purpose. The work everyone is proud of is the happy path. The work that eats the week is the case that does not fit. An agent trained on the happy path will either skip those cases or handle them with confidence it has not earned.
A process nobody can draw is not ready to run without a person.
then automate the boring part
Once the map is honest, the automation is usually smaller than the pitch. Copy the fields. Chase the missing attachment. Draft the status note. Leave the judgment where the judgment already lives.
That is less exciting than an agent that runs the department. It is also the version people still use in March.