PROCESS

Here is How to Build

Design

System

One process, many levels

The same work can be drawn at very different heights. Seen from far above, the whole company fits on one page, and a process is a single box with a name. Come closer, and that box opens into a handful of stages. Closer again, and each stage opens into the parts that do it, the steps inside each part, and finally the hands-on work of a single step. None of these pictures is more true than the others. They are the same work, seen from different distances.

Each distance answers a different question. From far above, the question is what the company does and how its processes fit together. One level down, it is what a single process is for and which way it runs. Further down, it is how the work is divided, who does each piece, in what order, and how one step is done well. A picture is useful when it answers the question that is being asked. Ask what the company does, and a drawing of every step buries the answer. Ask how to process a refund, and a map of the whole company does not even contain it.

So before drawing anything, know which level you are drawing. The level decides what belongs in the picture and what does not: which boxes appear, how much detail each one carries, and who needs to read it. A designer who moves between levels on purpose can follow one piece of work from the top of the company to a single click. A designer who moves between them by accident produces pictures that answer no question at all.

The highest possible standard is to treat every process as something that can be seen at several levels, each answering its own question, and to decide which level you are working at before drawing anything, so that every picture carries exactly the detail its question needs and no more.

Key Takeaway: The same work can be drawn at very different heights: the whole company on one page, one process and its stages, the parts and steps inside it, and the hands-on work of a single step. No level is more true than another; each answers a different question, from what the company does down to how one step is done well. A picture is useful only when it answers the question being asked. So decide the level before drawing, because the level decides what belongs in the picture.

The same work can be drawn at many heights, and each answers its own question; decide the level before you draw.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · System · Discipline 2: The Levels · Section: One process, many levels

MarvinPro | October 2026

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The ladder

This book climbs down the levels in order, and each volume of the Design domain works at its own height. At the top is L0: the map of every process the company runs, which is where this volume works. Below it is L1: the direction of a single process, the few stages it moves through from start to finish. Core sets that direction and then deepens it, from L1 down to L3, into the backbone that shows every step, team and system the core work passes through. Below the backbone, Sub cuts the process into its parts, Procedure lays out the steps inside each part, and Guides shows how a single step is done well.

The numbers are a convention, not a law. Many companies count the levels this way, starting from L0 for the map; some frameworks start at 1, and some name more levels below L3. What matters is not the number but the agreement: that everyone working on a process knows which level a picture shows, and that the levels sit in a fixed order, each one opening the level above it into more detail. A ladder that people climb in different orders is no ladder at all.

Each rung also has its own owner and its own pace of change. The map at L0 is owned at the top of the company and changes rarely, when the business itself changes. The direction at L1 belongs to the owner of a process and changes when its purpose does. The steps and the work at each step belong to the teams who run them, and change often, as tools and people change. Keeping the rungs apart lets each change at its own pace without shaking the rungs above it.

The highest possible standard is to use one fixed ladder of levels across the company, from the L0 map through each process's L1 direction and its backbone down to the parts, the steps and the work at a single step, with every picture labelled by its level and every level owned and changed at its own pace.

Key Takeaway: The book climbs down a fixed ladder. L0 is the map of all processes (System); L1 is the direction of one process, deepened down to L3 into its backbone (Core); below that come the parts (Sub), the steps (Procedure) and the work at one step (Guides). The numbering is a common convention, not a law; what matters is that everyone agrees which level a picture shows and that the levels sit in a fixed order. Each rung also has its own owner and its own pace of change, so keeping them apart lets each change without shaking the rungs above.

The levels are a ladder: one fixed order from the map down to a single step, each rung with its own owner and its own pace of change.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · System · Discipline 2: The Levels · Section: The ladder

MarvinPro | October 2026

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Stay on one level

The most common fault in process pictures is a mixed level. A map of the company where one box is a whole department and the box beside it is a single approval. A process drawing where most stages are broad, and one is spelled out click by click because someone cared about it. A design discussion that jumps from strategy to a form field and back again in a single sentence. Each of these feels detailed, but the detail is in the wrong place, and the picture stops answering any one question.

Mixed levels do real harm. They make small things look as large as big things, so a minor step sits on the map with the same weight as a whole process. They hide gaps, because a picture that drops to detail in one place and stays high in another never shows what is missing in between. And they confuse ownership, because a box drawn at the wrong level ends up with the wrong owner, decided by the wrong people at the wrong height.

So keep each picture on one level, and move between levels on purpose. When something needs more detail, do not squeeze it into the picture you have: open it into the level below, as its own picture, linked to the box it comes from. When something in the detail turns out to matter to the whole, carry it up to the level where it belongs and decide it there. Every level stays clean, and the links between them carry the work from one height to the next.

The highest possible standard is to keep every picture on a single level, to open anything that needs more detail into its own picture at the level below, linked to the box it comes from, and to carry anything that matters to the whole up to the level where it belongs and decide it there.

Key Takeaway: The most common fault in process pictures is a mixed level: a department next to a single approval on the same map, one stage spelled out click by click among broad ones. Mixed levels make small things look large, hide the gaps between levels and hand decisions to the wrong owners. So keep each picture on one level and move between levels on purpose: open detail into its own picture below, linked to the box it comes from, and carry what matters to the whole up to the level where it belongs.

Keep every picture on one level: open detail into the level below, and carry what matters to the whole up to the level where it belongs.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · System · Discipline 2: The Levels · Section: Stay on one level

MarvinPro | October 2026

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A real example

Go back to the failed renewal from the first discipline and follow it down the ladder. At L0, on the map, it is a single line between two boxes: finance passes the core the status of each payment, and the core relies on it. At L1, inside the core, it sits in the last stage, verify, where the core checks again and again whether each subscription is still active. Deeper in the backbone, verify shows who runs that check, which system holds the status, and the moment the software is held back.

Below the backbone, the detail belongs to finance. Collection is one of its parts. Inside collection, a procedure lays out the steps for a failed payment: try again, try again later, tell the customer, and finally close the case. And for the one step that tries again, a guide tells the person who sets it up how many times to retry and how far apart. That is the same event, seen at six heights, and each picture is correct at its own level.

Now look at where the fault from the first discipline really sits. Finance retries for a week; the core holds the software back after a day. Fixing it at the bottom, by changing the retry count in the guide, mends one side and leaves the other untouched. Fixing it in the core's backbone, by waiting longer, does the same from the other side. The fault is in the line between them, so it belongs at L0: an agreement on the map about how long a failed payment stays open before the software is held back. Decide it there, at the level where both processes meet, and then carry it down into each side's backbone, procedure and guide.

A failed renewal is one line on the map, a stage in the core and a step in finance; a fault in how processes meet is decided at L0 and carried down into each side.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · System · Discipline 2: The Levels · A real example

MarvinPro | October 2026

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The Levels

The same work can be drawn at very different heights, and each height answers its own question: what the company does, what a process is for and which way it runs, how its work is divided, and how a single step is done well. No level is more true than another. A picture is useful only when it answers the question being asked, so decide the level before you draw.

The book follows one fixed ladder. L0 is the map of every process, where this volume works. L1 is the direction of one process, deepened down to L3 into its backbone, which is the work of Core. Below that come the parts, the steps and the work at one step, in Sub, Procedure and Guides. The numbers are a common convention, not a law; what matters is that everyone agrees which level a picture shows, and that each rung has its own owner and its own pace of change.

And every picture stays on one level. Mixed levels make small things look large, hide the gaps between levels and hand decisions to the wrong owners. When something needs more detail, open it into the level below, linked to the box it comes from. When something in the detail matters to the whole, carry it up to the level where it belongs and decide it there. Kept this way, the levels let one piece of work be followed from the top of the company down to a single step, and every decision is made at the height where it belongs.

The levels are one ladder from the map to a single step: work at one level at a time, and decide everything at the height where it belongs.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · System · Discipline 2: The Levels · Chapter Outcome

MarvinPro | October 2026

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