Workflow step-by-step

Why is it essential to mark-up work processes and develop workflow charts?

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The diagramming helps teams translate their mental model of what they think happens into a group-shared model of what actually happens. Creating a visual workflow diagram enables the team to see the sources of rework, delays, duplicated steps, ambiguity in responsibilities, and so on. Besides process mapping is a fun team-bonding activity.

What is the workflow?

The workflow is a combination of steps, tasks, events, and decisions, which result in process outcome.

The workflow illustrates “Who / Does / What / When”, and is often mixed with the work process. The work process charts illustrate what work is done and include detailed task descriptions, while the workflow charts illustrate HOW work is done and include around 20% of all information about the process.

The workflow chart is usually created for the team and together with the team, to increase productivity and improve the team's work quality. Besides it is fun to do it together with the team, I can guarantee you will have a lot of "Aha!" moments:)

The are a lot of digital tools for workflow diagramming. Mural, Microsoft Visio, PowerPoint, etc. My current favorite is Canva. I would recommend using Canva or Mural if you are new to diagramming, both come with prebuilt workflow templates which are easy to adjust, and both have free plans.

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Let's go step-by-step over our team workflow. It will give you a good idea about how to create the workflow chart and how to use it but, of course, you will need to adjust this chart to your team's needs, based on your work process.

First, we need to determine the scope of the process we want to map. This involves identifying the starting point of the process, the endpoint of the process, and all the intermediate steps. We will use simple common diagramming shapes:

If you are not tech-savvy or simply have no time to learn new software, no worries. This exercise works excellently with an office whiteboard, markers, and colorful stickers.

First, we need to identify our starting and end points and place them on the opposite sides of the whiteboard. For the purpose of this post, I will take one part of our process - developing project documentation. Our starting point will be “Customer signed a contract” and our endpoint will be “Customer signed an Acceptance letter”

Next, we Identify specific steps in this process and place them in sequential order. Before connecting steps with lines we want to be sure that all steps are in the correct order. The process should not be overloaded with details at this stage, we need just key steps (or milestones). Here are our process steps (read from left to right).

But what should be done in case the concept isn't approved, or if stakeholders identified flaws in the drawings? We need to add the decision points, to be able to branch out the steps depending on the decision made.

Next, we need to assign responsibilities. The team works on tasks collaboratively, but we need to appoint specific individuals to be responsible for each step in the work process. We will use the “Swimming lanes” process mapping methodology.

On the top of the chart, we add squares and vertical lines (swimming lanes). In each square, we write a position title. In our team's case, in this part of the process involved a Designer, 3D Artist, 2 Draft Persons, and a Team Lead. After that, we move green squares with milestones into the right lanes.

Now our chart looks like this:

And now we can connect milestones and outline our workflow.

Our workflow chart is ready. We can see a clear picture of how our work is organized, we can make improvements or changes in our process, and what is most important we can see how change will affect the each team member.