Diagramming & Documenting Processes Outside of Workfront

[NicholeDu]

Hello Team,

I am a new system admin. Various Workfront resources have stressed the importance of getting to know your Team's processes (by documenting and diagraming them outside of the system) to better understand and unveil ways to optimize and bring that work into Workfront. This is something I agree is critical for my team to do but I have not come across anything in the Workfront outlining how to do so.

MY ASK:

• Does anyone have advice on best ways to approach this daunting task?
• Any recommendations on tools and resources to consider using
• For those with very complex and integrated processes, any recommendations on where to start or how to best break the process down as not to get overwhelmed.

Appreciate any additional advice you can offer.

Thank you,

Nichole

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Nicole,

As Catch-22ish as this will sound (and anticipating that many others will offer the type of reply you expected), my recommended tool of choice is...use Workfront.

If you decide to take that plunge, let me know, and I (and many others, I suspect) would be happy to offer additional details.

Regard,

Doug

[jerflo]

Hi Nichole,

Glad you reached out. I would agree that mapping these processes outside of the tool is best.

Here is a recording of a session I did last year at leap, entitled "Design a workflow to change your business." https://workfront-video.wistia.com/medias/rs95gvugh9.

It should answer your first and third bullets. Although it is 50 minutes, you can fast forward :). If you would like to schedule some time to talk through it, just let me know. Happy to help.

As for your other two bullets, here is what I would recommend:

Reco on tools? Lucid, Google Slides, or Smartdraw.

Complex processes? Yes, find a repeatable process that is hard to mess up (should have some familiarity). Ideally, this "workflow" or "process" won't impact your business dramatically as you work to get it optimized. I will leave it at that for now.

Hope this is helpful.

Jeremy

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Nicole -

Approach: Well, personally, I'm not a big fan of the huge meeting where everyone talks as some people don't talk and conversation gets derailed into 100 other things. LOL! I like to interview each key stake holder one by one and get what they thing the process is. This does take more time, but I find that I get things I never get when it is a large room. I think it has to do with the fact reality doesn't always reflect what is supposed to be happening and people don't want to admit that.

Diagramming: I used to use Visio as it had some options to help optimize the look, but now I use PPT as we don't have Visio anymore.

• Wanted to add.... since almost everyone I talk to has a slightly different process, I document all of those so when we are in the larger group we can talk about it. This is hard, don't get me wrong, but showing what everyone has in common but then all the points where they stay is nice to show. That way at the end of all this, you have one solid process that everyone can agree to.

As Julie Andrew states in the Sound of Music, I like to start at the very beginning and ask someone, how do you start work? I find for some reason people like to start towards the end of the project. Maybe it is because that usually has a more defined process, I'm not sure. But the start of a project always seems to be where there is confusion. And again, because I like the one-to-one approach, the conversation itself isn't daunting. The daunting part comes when you are diagramming everything you've learned from different people.