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 the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information It can be depicted as a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person or group, 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 be completed 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 another process. You can execute a full workflow alone (like writing, editing and publishing a blog post), or it can involve multiple people (like invoicing a client).
In this Process Street article, we’ll be looking at:
- What is a workflow?
- Why should you spend time creating workflows?
- How to document workflows in your business
- How to supercharge your workflows (with Process Street Workflows!)
- Example workflows for inspiration
- Next steps: How to become a workflow pro
What is a workflow?
A workflows is how you get work done. It’s the sequence of tasks from start to finish: The process.
Here’s an example of a workflow diagram:
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 involve multiple 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:
In this post, I’m going to go through, why you should use workflows, their components, and getting started creating your 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 responsible for Gantt charts!
The industrial revolution was the catalyst for smart thinkers like Gantt to come up with efficient ways of organizing a workforce. Business owners were suddenly able to mobilize huge workforces with powerful machinery, but needed to 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 bottleneck in your team’s activity lies.
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 an idea of what each workflow in your company looks like.
You can do this by mapping out the process, as explained in this guide:
Click here to check out our Workflow for Creating a Process Map from Scratch
The idea is to hold meetings with your team to find out how they’re working and to create workflows for them to execute on. If you’re running a small business or working remotely, asking them to record a screencast is a great option 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 Workflow in workflow software like Process Street.
Creating Process Street Workflow 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 ran by an employee:
In the example above, you can see a client onboarding workflow with three checklists — one for each time a client has been onboarded.
Process Street makes it simple to track your team’s workflow activity, and then optimize any bottlenecks or obstacles. In addition, documenting your workflows will ensure compliance with any industry regulations and facilitate your risk management planning.
Supercharge your workflows (with Process Street Workflows!)
Process Street was created to help businesses create workflows easily, then execute them and generate progress reports. It just so happens that Process Street’s Workflows product is specifically designed to help you build, maintain, and optimize the workflows in your business.
In this section, I’m going to walk you through creatinging a workflow in Process Street.
First, you’ll need to sign up for Process Street and create a new Workflow.
Click the “New” button in the top left corner of your screen and select “Blank Workflow“.
Note: If you don’t see the “New” button, you may have collapsed the side menu on the left of your screen (click “show menu” to open it). Or you may need to ask your Administrator for ‘edit’ permission or to grant you permission to a folder in which to create your new workflow. Only admins can create new workflows in the home screen of the Library.
Once your blank workflow opens up, you can start adding more details to it.
Click where you see the words “Blank Workflow” in the top left corner, and change this to your desired workflow name.
You can add an optional description for your workflow just below its name. This can be used to share an outline of what this particular workflow is used for. Click the words “Click here to add a description” and start typing.
Next, you can start to type task names into the blank tasks as shown below.
Add more tasks and headings
Tasks are the actionable steps that are involved in implementing your workflow.
Headings are the main stages or segments of your workflow and can be used to separate groups of tasks.
In the bottom left corner of the workflow editor, you will see this menu that allows you to create, copy, move or delete tasks and headings.
- Click ‘Task‘ or ‘Heading‘ to add these into your workflow
- Use the Up/Down arrows to re-order your headings and tasks
- Click ‘Duplicate‘ to copy a task or heading (and any content within them)
- Click the Trashcan icon to delete a heading or task
- Click ‘Approval’ to add a sign-off task into your workflow
Pro tips:
- Add new tasks by hitting your Enter / Return key
- Remove an empty task by hitting your Backspace / Delete key
- Transform tasks into headings (and vice versa) by adding or removing a colon : at the end of the words in that field
- Re-order your headings and tasks by mousing over them on the left side, then drag and drop them into place
- Multi-select separate tasks and headings by holding your CMD or CTRL key and clicking on each item you’d like to select
- To select a group of consecutive tasks, click the first task or heading you want to select while holding the SHIFT key. Then click the last task or heading, to select all of them in one go, as shown below
When you multi-select tasks, you can bulk-set Task Assignments, Dynamic Due dates, Stop Tasks and Task Permissions, as shown above.
You can also move this block of tasks up and down, or delete them by using the “Move up” or “Move down” arrows, or delete the block by clicking the delete button.
Save your changes
Save changes to your workflow when you have finished editing.
Now you can create a workflow run straight away if you choose, or add more features and functions into your workflow.
Add more functions & features
On the right-hand side of the editor, you’ll see two sections, “Content” and “Forms” as shown in the image above.
Content can be used to share information in your workflow, like an image, text or video. Whereas forms are used to collect or store information in your workflow runs.
Find out how to add the various content or form fields into your workflows:
And how to add and use these powerful workflow features:
Learn how to build out or your workflows further, by following the 5 Stages of Process Building in our Getting Started Guide.
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 to be 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 United States; 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 of bolts, rivets and other fasteners; and 36 miles (58 kilometers) of electrical wire; and put them all together to form an airplane.
The fuselage, or body of the airplane, is produced at a Boeing plant in Wichita, Kan., in the American Midwest. At that facility, employees attach the nose section of the airplane’s fuselage to the center and 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.
At Process Street, we often receive guest post pitches. When they’re accepted, we run the below checklist to get everybody on the same page as to the progress. If you need edits, you can even add the guest writer into the checklist and work with them that way.
Click here to see our Workflow for Accepting, Formatting, Editing and Publishing a Guest Post!
Next steps: How to become a workflow pro
Once you’ve got a handle on Workflows, consider how you might benefit from using Process Street’s Pages to get even more value from your recurring work. Pages is your team’s completely free process documentation library.
You can use Pages to build out a foundation for your company’s most important policies and processes, and make sure everyone has easy access to the right process documentation. Anyone in your company can create a free Process Street account and enjoy unlimited access to Pages.
Start by documenting a process in Pages. Then build a workflow to bring your process knowledge to life. Link Pages and Workflows together to keep everyone on the same page.
At this point, you’ve opened yourself up to a whole lot more possibilities.
With documented workflows in business process management software like Process Street, you can even start automating steps — read here for a complete guide 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
You can also check out our Tech Out Loud podcast for more great insights into workflow building, process management, and much more!
Click here to check out our Tech Out Loud podcast!
You need to scrutinize your business processes before you document them. Check out this episode of our podcast Tech Out Loud to learn how Noah Kagan went about scrutinizing and growing his 8-figure business:
Tech Out Loud is the only podcast that brings you the most impactful blog posts from the biggest names in tech, straight to your ears.
You can also listen to this podcast on other platforms. Click to see the full list! If you enjoyed this podcast, subscribe for a new episode each week.
Process Street can be your workflow software, standard operating procedure software, onboarding software, and more!
What’s the first workflow you want to document, and why? Let me know in the comments!
The post What is a Workflow? A Simple Guide to Getting Started first appeared on Process Street | Checklist, Workflow and SOP Software.
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