Choose a real process and the people it affects

This capstone asks a team of two to five colleagues to improve one real process, not a hypothetical one. It follows the same shape as the program's Disability Inclusion capstone: choose, analyze, co-design, then decide. The goal is not a perfect process. It is a documented change that the people affected helped shape, with an owner and a way to know whether it worked.

Choose a process that recurs, touches communities and sits within your team's reach. Good candidates include a notice that explains a service change or denial, an intake or assessment step, a recurring stakeholder or advisory meeting, a grant or contract requirement, a provider reporting form, or a public comment process. Avoid anything that depends mainly on a statute you cannot change, and avoid individual personnel matters, which belong to Human Resources. Ask four questions: Does it happen often enough that a change will matter? Do we know, or can we find out, who it affects and how? Can our team or sponsor actually change it? Is there a decision maker who will receive our request?

Then map the people. Start with those who experience the process directly, such as people receiving services, families, guardians, providers, county and Tribal staff, and DHS staff who carry it out. Then add those who are affected but rarely consulted: people with limited English proficiency, Deaf and hard of hearing people, people who use assistive technology, people in Greater Minnesota with limited internet, people who distrust government for good historical reasons, and staff at small culturally specific providers. Note which relationships your team already has and which it does not.

Some parts of the work have formal routes. When a process affects Minnesota Tribal nations, Minnesota law requires agencies, including DHS, to have a Tribal consultation policy and a Tribal liaison, and it describes consultation as the direct and interactive involvement of Tribal governments in developing policy. That is government-to-government and is not replaced by community input sessions. Accommodation, discrimination and legal questions go to their offices.

Finally, pay attention to the team's own lens. The Minimization orientation on the Intercultural Development Continuum describes a common tendency to assume that one process, applied the same way, is fair to everyone. You do not need to know anyone's stage to name that assumption early so the analysis can test it.

Fictional case: A capstone team led by Aaliyah, with Scott, Ngoc and Pedro, is choosing its project. Scott proposes rewriting the entire waiver eligibility statute. Ngoc proposes improving the annual reassessment appointment letter that DSD sends through lead agencies, which families often say they misunderstand. Pedro notes that the letter goes to people served by counties and Tribal nations. The team's sponsor, a DSD manager, has authority over the letter template.

With your team, list three candidate processes and score each on the four questions: recurrence, knowledge of who is affected, authority to change and a decision maker. Draft a one-paragraph scope statement for the strongest candidate.

Which processes in your own work do you suspect are harder for some people than others, but have never been examined? What has kept them unexamined?