Org design evidence / duplication hunt
Function Mapping (OD)
Function mapping documents what work is actually being done, and where, by breaking the organization down into functions and activities, with FTE and cost attached, before anyone draws a new org chart.
It is the evidence layer of organization design. Duplication, fragmentation, and orphaned work only become visible once the work itself is mapped, not the boxes people sit in.
- Problem
- Org design evidence / duplication hunt
- Altitude
- Enterprise
- Effort to run
- Heavy
- Evidence base
- Established
Theory & origin
The method comes from Porter's value-chain analysis (1985) and the activity-analysis tradition in organization design, built on Galbraith's premise that structure should follow the work, not the other way around. In practice, OD teams inventory functions both top-down (value chain, then functions, then activities) and bottom-up (what people actually spend their time on), then attach FTE and cost to each activity. The map exposes what an org chart hides: the same activity performed in four different units, critical work owned by nobody, and shadow functions that grew up inside departments because the official one was too slow. Restructuring without this layer is just rearranging labels on boxes whose contents nobody actually checked.
Key components
The parts of the model and what each one means, in plain terms.
- Value chain
- The end-to-end capabilities the business needs. A neutral reference frame that outlives any particular current structure.
- Functions
- Coherent groupings of work within the chain: finance operations, demand planning, customer care. Defined by the work itself, not by who happens to report to whom.
- Activities & FTE
- The decomposed work with headcount and cost attached, the unit of analysis where duplication and fragmentation actually become countable.
- Overlaps, gaps, orphans
- The diagnostic read: duplicated activities, fragmented ownership, critical work with no home, and spans or layers the actual work does not justify.
- Redesign decisions
- Per activity: consolidate, centralize, federate, automate, or stop, each backed by the FTE case the map makes defensible.
Explore the model
| Activity | Finance | Ops Jakarta | Ops Surabaya | Risk | Corp HQ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
8 | 6 | 5 | 3 | ||
0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | |
14 | 9 | ||||
85 |
How a consultant runs it
- 01 Anchor on the value chain first: what does this organization have to be able to do, end to end, regardless of who does it today.
- 02 Inventory activities both top-down and bottom-up. The gap between the official breakdown and the time-study reality is itself a finding.
- 03 Attach FTE and cost to every activity. A map with no numbers is just a poster, not a case.
- 04 Hunt for three patterns: duplication (the same activity, many homes), fragmentation (one activity, split thin across units), and orphans (critical work, no owner).
- 05 Only then design: consolidate, centralize, or federate each activity, with the numbers attached, and hand the map to job family mapping as its input.
When to use
- 01 Before any restructuring, as the evidence base that separates real design from politics
- 02 Post-merger integration, where two organizations are doing the same work in different places under different names
- 03 Cost or efficiency programs that need to cut work, not just cut heads
When not to use
- 01 When leadership has already decided the answer and just wants a map as decoration. The whole point of this method is that it can contradict the intended design.
- 02 Micro-mapping a small, stable team, where the overhead outweighs any finding
- 03 As a one-off artifact. An unowned function map goes stale within a year of the next reorg.
Worked example
A 1,200-FTE services firm wants 15% cost out of its corporate functions and proposes cutting proportionally.
The function map tells a different story: management reporting is performed in four separate units totalling 22 FTE with three different toolchains, procurement is fragmented across every business unit at 0.5 FTE each, below critical mass everywhere, and contract management is an orphan nobody has owned since the last reorg.
The redesign consolidates reporting into one team of 14, pools procurement into a center of 9, and gives contracts a real home. The saving beats the original target, without the across-the-board cut that would have damaged the functions that were already lean.
Common pitfalls
- 01 Mapping departments instead of work, which faithfully reproduces the exact org chart the exercise was meant to see past
- 02 Skipping FTE and cost attribution, which leaves you with a diagram and no actual case
- 03 Letting unit heads self-report activities with no triangulation, so everyone owns everything and nobody duplicates anything
- 04 Stopping at the map. Findings with no redesign decisions and no owners change nothing.
Sample deliverable
One real engagement, start to finish. Watch the numbers travel from raw input, onto the chart, into the finished artifact.
Input
- Finance operations310 FTE
- Procurement (fragmented)210 FTE
- Reporting (4 units)145 FTE
- FP&A85 FTE
Process
Activities are inventoried and weighted by FTE, and duplication and fragmentation fall out of the totals
Function map: multifinance corporate functions (1,200 FTE)
- Duplicationreporting in 4 units, 22 FTE
- Orphancontract management, no owner
- Caseconsolidate for 38 FTE, Rp 48 bn