Develop workflow procedures to manage your team’s activities and improve productivity. This means identifying all steps involved in your process including those that are interdependent, and documenting the steps with diagrams of flow. This is crucial to avoiding common workflow errors, such as bottlenecks and delays.

Start with the Endpoint

Define the outcome Workflow Management Software you wish to achieve with your workflow. For instance, a project milestone. This will help you identify the essential activities such as information, people and technologies that must be in place in order to achieve your goals. It will also help you determine whether the workflow is effective/successful.

Create and test workflows in a nonproduction environment before migrating them to your production environment. This will ensure that your company isn’t in danger due to untested or incomplete workflows.

Create wait nodes, conditions and actions on the canvas of a workflow. Actions allow you to set up triggers that activate the process, such as when a record is in compliance with certain criteria. You can also add a wait node to halt the progression of a record until a specific event occurs. Condition nodes allow you to evaluate records based on the properties they have specified and direct the progress of an item based on evaluations.

Review all steps in your workflow. Particularly, pay attention to the ones that involve handoffs. If the handoff involves people or systems there are vulnerable points which could cause confusion or technical issues. Many times these are the main reason for delays or bottlenecks in the flow of work. A clear record of your processes can help you avoid making these mistakes.