Plan and develop a procedure or workflow

Here is how to develop or change a process or workflow in 7 steps. You can use as much or as little of our help as you need. For a free consultation about your business process needs, contact us.

1. Work out the inputs and outputs that you need.

Inputs and outputs

A procedure or workflow has inputs and outputs.

Example—Close a sale

Inputs:

Client information
Conversation with client
Product or service information

Outputs:

Order from client

We can help with your procedure or workflow analysis.

2. Identify the participants and other stakeholders.

Participants and stakeholders

A procedure or workflow has participants and other stakeholders.

Example—Close a sale

Participants:

Sales Representative (interviews client and closes sale)
Supervisor (approves sales proposal)
Administrator (records order)

Other stakeholders:

Service Manager (needs to set guidelines about what the Sales Representative can promise)
Marketing coordinator (needs demographic information about the client)

We can help with your procedure or workflow analysis.

3. Work out the communication flow amongst the participants.

Communication flow

We use ‘swimming lane’ charts to work out the communication flow of a procedure. Contact us for help with analysing your communications.

screen snap of swimming lane chart at the start of a procedure

4. Write the procedure and get stakeholders to review it.

Writing the procedure

A procedure has a chart, steps summary and detailed support documents. Get stakeholders to contribute to it and then to review it. We can help with this! For procedure documents structure, start at slide 18.

5. Train, test, improve

Train the first participants. Test and measure the procedure or workflow. Use the results to improve it.

Testing the procedure or workflow

Select some team members to test the procedure or workflow. Measure its effectiveness compared with any previous one. Get feedback from stakeholders. Use the results to improve it before you release it to the whole team.

We can help with training and measurement.

6. Train all participants and stakeholders and release the procedure or workflow for general use.

Releasing the new procedure or workflow

When you are certain that the new procedure or workflow is ready, announce it to the team and make sure everyone receives training.

We can help to prepare and deliver the training.

7. Keep the continual improvement cycle rolling.

Continual improvement

Now that your team is using the procedure or workflow, you can start improving it. We can help if you need us!

How we can help you

Workflows are a natural part of developing a procedure manual and preparing for certification. As we work through the processes we may discover workflows that are currently ad hoc (unstructured) need to be developed properly or improved. We can include them in the project.