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What is a Workflow? A Simple Guide to Getting Startedprocess.st/what-is-a-workflow/

If you look at the Wikipedia definition of a workflow, you’re probably going to get confused as I did:

“A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activity enabled by thesystematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, orprocess information It can be depicted as a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person orgroup, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms.”

Let’s put this simply…

Workflows are the way people get work done, and can be illustrated as series of steps that need to becompleted sequentially in a diagram or checklist.

Think of it literally as work flowing from one stage to the next, whether that’s through a colleague, tool, or anotherprocess. You can execute a full workflow alone (like writing, editing and publishing a blog post), or it can involvemultiple people (like invoicing a client).

Here’s an example of a workflow diagram:

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Here’s a simple example of a workflow where multiple people are involved:

A freelancer creates an invoice and sends it to their client

The client sends the invoice to their finance department

The finance department approves the invoice and processes the payment

A workflow you use on your own might be something like this:

Write a blog post

SEO optimize it

Check for spelling and grammar

Publish

Often, in business, workflows are much more complicated. Something like employee onboarding might involvemultiple meetings, reports, tasks, and departments. It’s at this level that they need to be properly monitored,managed and optimized to make sure they’re as efficient as they can be.

Another way of displaying a workflow is with a checklist — a simple set of instructions, like this:

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In this post, I’m going to go through, why you should use workflows, their components, and getting started creatingyour own.

Why should you spend time creating workflows?

The origins of workflows can be traced back, unsurprisingly, to Henry Gantt. Yes, that’s the same person responsiblefor Gantt charts!

The industrial revolution was the catalyst for smart thinkers like Gantt to come up with efficient ways of organizing aworkforce. Business owners were suddenly able to mobilize huge workforces with powerful machinery, but neededto answer a question before they knew exactly the best way to harness that energy:

What’s the most efficient way to get this work done?

Breaking that question down, Gantt concluded he needed to know:

The exact jobs being done

Who is responsible for what

The time each task takes

By answering those questions and structuring the answers into a chart or process, you get a workflow.

As the old adage goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”. By measuring the work that needs to be done,you can manage how optimally it’s executed. Otherwise, you have no idea what’s going on or where the bottleneckin your team’s activity lies.

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How to document workflows in your business

The same way Gantt started out by measuring the workforce’s activities, your starting point should also be to get anidea of what each workflow in your company looks like.

You can do this by mapping out the process, as explained in this guide:

The idea is to hold meetings with your team to find out how they’re working and to create workflows for themto execute on. If you’re running a small business or working remotes, asking them to record a screencast is a greatoption because it’s precise and easy to do.

Once you have enough information to start creating your first formal workflow, it’s time to transfer that to a templatein Process Street.

Creating Process Street templates for your workflows is as easy as writing a Word document. And, once it’s done,you can see work being completed as checklists on your dashboard; one checklist for each time the workflow is ranby an employee:

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In the example above, you can see a client onboarding workflow with three checklists — one for each time a clienthas been onboarded.

Process Street makes it simple to track your team’s workflow activity, and then optimize any bottlenecks orobstacles.

Creating a workflow in Process Street

Process Street was created to help businesses create workflows easily, then execute them and generate progressreports.

In this section, I’m going to walk you through the first part: creating a workflow.

First, you’ll need to sign up for Process Street and create a new template.

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Click ‘New Blank Template…’ to make a blank workflow template you can fill in.

Name your template with the title of the workflow. For example, ‘Content Approval Workflow’.

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Once inside the template editor, you’ll see a blank list down the left-hand side; these are your workflow steps (ortasks). Fill them in with the rough steps you or your team would need to follow. Any details for each step will beadded later.

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Invite your team to Process Street using ‘Add Members…’. This allows you to assign your team to the steps they’reresponsible for, and make it clear to others what the bigger picture of the workflow is.

When you’ve got your steps typed out, and members assigned (optional), you can hit ‘Save changes’ and startrunning your workflow.

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On the next screen, you’ll notice you can run a checklist from the template. Hit ‘Run checklist…’ to execute theworkflow.

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Name your checklist to reflect the instance of the workflow. For example, for a content approval workflow, you’d titlethat one checklist with the name of the content to be approved.

As you progress through the workflow, you can check tasks off and leave comments to keep your team updated.

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Example workflows for inspiration

To get a better idea of what a workflow is, examples are key.

Here’s two from the most complex workflows ever dreamt up, to simple, everyday tasks.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes assembly

Boeing’s process for manufacturing an airplane from scratch is mind-blowing. Each individual workflow isn’t likely tobe so complex, but the sheer scale of the task, from start to end would need serious thought:

“Boeing Commercial Airplanes performs major assembly of all 737s at its factories in the UnitedStates; however, parts for the airplanes come from suppliers all over the world.

Assembling a 737 is a complex job. Factory employees must take 367,000 parts; an equal number ofbolts, rivets and other fasteners; and 36 miles (58 kilometers) of electrical wire; and put them alltogether to form an airplane.

The fuselage, or body of the airplane, is produced at a Boeing plant in Wichita, Kan., in the AmericanMidwest. At that facility, employees attach the nose section of the airplane’s fuselage to the centerand tail sections. When the fuselage is complete, it is strapped aboard a railroad car for a 2,175-mile(3,500-kilometer) train ride across the United States…”

Accepting, editing, and publishing a guest post

Here’s a more tangible example that you might be able to relate to.11/12

At Process Street, we often receive guest post pitches. When they’re accepted, we run the below checklist to geteverybody on the same page as to the progress. If you need edits, you can even add the guest writer into thechecklist and work with them that way.

Your next steps with workflows

Once you get the general idea of what a workflow is and how you can use them, you’ve opened yourself up to awhole lot more possibilities.

With documented workflows in Process Street, you can even start automating steps — read here for a completeguide on that and here for an introduction.

Here’s what you can do next:

Brainstorm the workflows you and your team use

Optimize workflows to cut out inefficient steps

Create a library of processes and workflows to future-proof your business

Automate tedious work by connecting Process Street to Zapier

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