Transcript
Page 1: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013

ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

MIKE FITZMAURICE, NINTEX

Page 2: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

sponsors

Page 3: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

About me

• Mike Fitzmaurice

• Vice President of Product Technology, Nintex

• 11 years at Microsoft

• SharePoint’s original technical evangelist

Page 4: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Introduction

• There are more than five

• These are extra top-of-mind

• Based on real-world projects

• Advice applies to any workflow product

• No demos

Page 5: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 6: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Don’t Always Use SharePoint Workflow

Page 7: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Managing how people work

• Document approval & feedback

• Collaborative reviews & discussions

• Gathering signatures

Page 8: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Good Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Automating some of SharePoint’s behavior

• Approve site creation requests

• Parse incoming email in a list and act on it

• Publishing items to target

• Moving project proposals through lifecycles

Page 9: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Possible Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Manipulating other applications, data sources

• Employee onboarding

• Resource scheduling

• SharePoint lists become work queues

Page 10: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Bad Uses of SharePoint Workflow

• Transaction-oriented processes

• Blocking or modifying activity

• Application-to-application service activity

• Aggressive data transformations

• Work that doesn’t involve SharePoint at all

Page 11: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 12: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Plan to Fail

Page 13: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Consensus May Not Exist

• Get 3 employees and 1 manager together

• Talk about a process

• Little agreement

• Documentation disagreement, too

Page 14: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

The Process Will Change

Page 15: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Exceptions are Initially Ignored

• Rarely is this considered in advance

• Rarely does everyone agree

• Ignored exceptions lead to bypass

Page 16: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Initial Failure as a Winning Strategy

• People do not want to hear these hard truths.

• You may have to create an initial workflow just to show

how awful a process is.

• Only then can you change it.

Page 17: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Process

Step

Step

Step

Start Simple

Automatethisfirst

Automatetheselater

Page 18: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 19: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Focus on Everyday Process

Page 20: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

“Policy is the abdication of thought.”-Nathan Myrvold

Page 21: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Everyday Processes

• Steal time

• Get in the way

• Annoy users

Page 22: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Everyday Processes

• Have few stakeholders (even if many participants)

• Are easier to automate

• Free up time to focus on more critical stuff

Page 23: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

“Process is the preservation and reuse of thought.”-Mike Fitzmaurice

Page 24: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Everyday Processes

• Automating them trains users how to think

Page 25: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 26: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Put Forms in Their Proper Place

Page 27: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

The Form is the User Interface

• Not the workflow

• Not the data

Page 28: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

If (user is Bob) then do this and that and the other thing undo thatEnd if

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

If (user is Bob) then do this and that and the other thing undo thatEnd if

If (x and y) then do this do thatEnd if

Page 29: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Form-Only App Problems

• Hidden logic

• Disconnected logic

• Security

• Complexity without code

Page 30: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

User Interface

Process Logic Data Access

Begin Step 1

Step 2Step 3

End

Think About the Whole App

Page 31: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Make the Workflow Do the Work

• Documented

• Auditable

• Easier to change

• Easier to manage

Page 32: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 33: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

One Form Per Step

• Submit

• Start

• Task

Page 34: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 35: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Task Forms

• Workflow can route new data

• New data can be written to original form

• All info can be sent to other places

Page 36: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

It’s Not All About Spreadsheets, Either• Same problem, different file type

• Example: HUGE Excel file with macros

• Workflow: route, track, remind

Page 37: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 38: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Self-Reporting Workflows

Page 39: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Least-Loved Techniques

• Browsing individual history entries

• Building custom reports

Page 40: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

You’re Already Using SharePoint

• The list itself can be the report

• Users can sort, group, filter on metadata

• Write progress information to item properties

• Stage Workflows already do this

Page 41: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 42: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Summary

• Don’t always use SharePoint Workflow

• Plan to fail

• Focus on everyday processes

• It’s not about forms

• Self-reporting workflows

Page 43: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

questions?

MIKEFITZMAURICE.WORDPRESS.COM

@MIKEFITZ

Page 44: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

thank you.

SHAREPOINT AND PROJECT CONFERENCE ADRIATICS 2013

ZAGREB, NOVEMBER 27-28 2013

Page 45: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions
Page 46: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Make Metadata do the Work

Page 47: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Avoid Hard-Coding

• Task assignees

• Site URLs

• Document names

Page 48: Five Best Practices for Approaching Workflow Solutions

Reference What You Need

• List queries

• Database queries

• Web service calls

• Workflow context