Your ABC Guide to Documenting Workflow Efficiently

Running in circles before getting things done can be highly frustrating whether you are an individual or a team.

Do you ever feel like you are stuck in a hamster wheel?

Trying to complete a task but constantly getting lost in the chaos?

Are you working but never making any progress? You are not alone.

Workflow documentation is the answer to all your organizational woes.

If you want to streamline your work process and make it more efficient, documenting your workflow is the way.

By documenting workflow, you’ll have a clear path to follow for your work process and, at the same time, cut out the confusion and errors that are dragging your productivity.

This comprehensive guide is all you need. From creating effective workflow outlines and identifying roles and assignments to the necessary tools, this guide covers the A to Z of  documenting workflow. Let’s go.

Frequently Asked Questions

Documenting Workflow: The Basics

All businesses and organizations have workflows. Even individual employees and departments within an organization have their workflow.

For example, onboarding a new employee could be a departmental workflow which is for the HRs. A more simple workflow is the vacation request.

When these workflows are managed efficiently, they result in business efficiency.

Otherwise, your business will suffer revenue loss. Not only that. An inefficient work process can dent your reputation as it leads to missed deadlines and customer dissatisfaction.

What’s a Workflow?

A workflow is a sequence of tasks employees or departments within an organization perform to accomplish specific objectives.

These tasks have several steps, each depending on the action that precedes it. A workflow clarifies the what, who and when of a business process.

Before we delve deep into the step-by-step process of documenting your workflow, let’s look at some benefits of workflow documentation.

• Clarity: Documenting workflow makes things move smoothly from one step to the next. As everyone involved understands their respective roles and responsibilities, it cuts out confusion and miscommunication and ensures consistency in performance and outcomes.
• Efficiency: Workflow documentation helps identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in an existing process. Thus, organizations can optimize their processes and eliminate redundancies that are gulping away time and other resources.
• Expertise Retention: Documented workflow preserves the expertise of senior employees who have worked in different capacities. This knowledge can be passed down to new employees, making the transition smooth are preventing the loss of tried-and-true know-how and insights.
• Compliance: Workflow documentation helps businesses comply effortlessly with regulatory bodies’ requirements and standards. Since the process is consistent and transparent, audits and inspections will be no cause for concern.

Step #1: Pick A Workflow to Document

The first step in documenting a workflow is to select the one specific workflow you want to document. This is commonsensical. But yet, a lot of people miss it.

This step is very straightforward if your business has a single operational workflow.

However, a lot of organizations have more than one workflow. So, choosing a workflow to start with might be tricky. You need to critically examine existing workflows to make a choice.

Don’t be tempted to try and document more than a workflow at a time. Doing so won’t yield the desired result.

Start with the most important workflow for your business.

How you decide this is by prioritizing workflow based on their impacts. The workflow with the most effects, positive or negative, on your business operations should come first.

If more than one workflow comes to mind, you can prioritize based on urgency. Keep all others aside to come back to them later.

Step #2: Define The Process of Your Selected Workflow

Once you identify a workflow to document, the next step is to define the scope of the workflow.

Every workflow has some processes under it. From initiation to completion, you have to figure out and itemize what steps are involved.

This stage is where the bulk of the work is. Here, you have to get granular answers to questions like;

• Where the workflow starts and ends
• How many steps are involved in the workflow
• Who performs each of these steps, and when

Listing the process and tasks involved in your workflow will help you better understand their relationship and association between them.

Are there two or more tasks that are performed simultaneously? How many are the dependent tasks that need to wait until a previous task is completed?

You can map this out on a whiteboard, or flow charts or diagrams for better visualization. Or, if you have the budget, use workflow documentation software.

As you map out the tasks, make sure you create a corresponding list of responsible people and pay attention to their impact on the process.

Who are those in charge of approving? What’s the structure of the hierarchy invloved. If there are gaps in the structure, you’ll see it here and see how you can fill it.

Once you have a visual representation of the process, you can now question the efficacy of the exiting structure.

With that you might discover, some steps are removable while some are mergeable, thus reducing the amount of time and effort to complete the process.

Perhaps, reducing the number of stages of approval or giving the authority to a minimal number of people will fast track the process and bring efficiency.

You have to look at it closely and think it over. Again, you’ll spend the most time at this stage.

Step #3: Define the Workflow Input and Output

Once you have defined the scope of the process, the steps and the people involved, it’s time to list the resources and expected outcomes of the workflow.

Break down the resources needed to execute each step of the workflow and document the deliverables of the process.

Depending on your business, this must be something tangible such as new software, marketing material or publish-ready video etc.

Without spelling out the outcome, you are starting a journey without a destination, meaning you can never arrive.

Whatever it is, your workflow must end with a clear outcome.

In addition, if the process has more than one outcome, you must specify all the possible outcomes in your workflow diagram.

And if there are people responsible for this, you must also put that.

In case the outcome is not achieved, there’s someone to give an explanation to the question, WHY.

Step #4: Get Co-Workers and Other Stakeholders Involved

If you run your business solo, you may not need this step.

However, if you have a team of two or more, before documenting your workflow, you have to discuss it with the parties involved.

Gathering information from people involved in the execution of the workflow can be the difference between an effective and a defective workflow.

You have to identify individuals who have in-depth knowledge about the process and steps you want to document. These could be managers, team members or other stakeholders.

Have them review the information you’ve gathered so far, the steps, inputs, outputs, and roles and let them clarify any ambiguous aspect or mention other important details you might have missed.

By reviewing the process document and other performance metrics with other subject matter experts, you can be sure that your workflow document clearly and accurately depict the current process.

And that way, it will be easy to pinpoint the area of improvement and make changes that will not affect any concerned party negatively.

Step #5: Documents the Workflow Step by Step

Now that you know what your workflow involves and you’ve validated the information with other stakeholders, you can draft out your workflow documents.

To do this, you can first use a pen and paper to arrange the steps you’ve uncovered so far sequentially from the start to the outcome.

As you do, you may come across some complicated tasks. Break them down into sub-tasks until you reach the outcome.

The goal at this point isn’t to create a perfectly optimized workflow. Not yet. What you are doing here is fully documenting all the steps first.

After that, you can transfer these data into a workflow map to better visualize it. To do this, use workflow documentation software to create a workflow diagram that’s easy to understand and follow.

Some software will give you a glance at your workflow in a flow chart diagram, some allow you to use a Gantt Chart, while others let you switch between both.

The diagramtic representation of this workflow make it easy for you to  spot areas of improvement. You’ll have to play with as many to find the perfect tool for you.

Step #6: Validate The Documented Workflow

Once you are done documenting your workflow and modifying some areas, you might think It’s time to roll it out. Well, not yet. You have to test it first.

You want to catch any error in the workflow before putting it into action.

So again, invite team members and stakeholders to take the new workflow for a spin.

Implore them to provide feedback and report what work and what doesn’t and what doesn’t work as expected.

Use the information gathered here to rework the workflow and make all necessary improvements.

Once you are through with these, your workflow document is ready to work

Step #7: Use, Monitor and Improve

If your purpose is just to document your workflow, then your job is done. But if you’ll putting the workflow into action, then your job is far from done.

To err on this side of caution, start by deploying your newly optimized workflow across a small team in your organization to see it’s performance.

Consequently, you can then implement it company-wide as applicable.

Documenting workflow is a continuous process. You need to monitor the performance and improve whatever you can constantly.

Analyze your workflow at intervals to identify inefficiencies and create an improvement plan that won’t halt your business processes.

And anytime you make changes to your workflow, don’t forget to get stakeholders involved before putting it into action.

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Wrapping up

Documenting workflow is one of the effective tools for productivity in many organization.

Done right, it improves efficiency, reduce errors, and ensure consistency in their operations. It just requires a bit of work.

As we’ve explained you above, you need a thorough understanding of the process, clear objectives, standard operating procedures, stakeholder involvement, documentation tools, and continuous improvement for effective documenting.

If you followed up to this point, you should have no trouble documenting a workflow.

We hope this guide helps you. For further clarifications and questions, feel free to drop us a line in the comment ection below.