Create workflow processes to manage your team’s work and increase productivity. This means identifying all steps involved in your process as well as those that are interdependent, and capturing them with diagrams of flow. This step is critical to avoid common workflow mistakes, such as bottlenecks and delays.
Start with the Endpoint
Write down the goal you wish to achieve through your workflow. For instance an achievement milestone for your project. This will help you determine the essential actions such as information, people and technology that must be in place to achieve your objectives. It will also help you determine whether the workflow is effective/successful.
Create and test workflows in a nonproduction environment before transferring them to the production environment. This will ensure that your business is not at risk because of insufficient or untested workflows.
Define actions, condition nodes and wait nodes on a workflow canvas. You can define triggers that trigger a process for instance when the record meets certain requirement. You can add an action node that waits until a certain event happens to stop the progression of the record. Condition nodes let you examine records based on the properties they are assigned to and to control the progression of records based on evaluations.
Examine all steps of your workflow. Particularly, pay attention to the ones that involve handoffs. If the handoff is between people or systems there are points of vulnerability that can lead to difficulties in communication or technical issues. Most often they are the primary reason for delays or bottlenecks in a workflow. Documenting your processes clearly will help you avoid these mistakes.