Workflow: What it is and how to create it

Organizing a team’s processes and daily tasks can take up a large part of a manager’s time. Structuring a workflow is an efficient way to manage tasks and steps. 

Flows ensure team productivity. With them, everyone knows their roles, deadlines and objectives, creating a collaborative and light work environment. 

What is a workflow? 

The idea of ​​workflow, or workflow, is to create a process in stages, containing detailed project information. This way, employees know what their tasks are, deadlines and priorities in a more visual way. 

Every task has a path to follow. When a task is created, it spends a pending period until someone responsible starts it. Once started, the task becomes under development, another stage in the flow. After completion, the employee must present the results of the task so that their leader can approve it. Once approved, the task can finally be completed. 

In this case, the flow was built with the stages “pending”, “under development”, “under approval” and “completed”. 

In addition to having the steps defined, the flow must provide more information about the task. For example: task description, deadline, priority and which project and client the activity refers to. 

Nowadays, workflows can be created with ease. Thanks to task management tools, you can create and automate your workflow, in addition to customizing it according to your company’s processes.

How important is workflow? 

Having a well-defined workflow is essential for any company’s processes. It adds clarity and efficiency to team operations. 

This is because the organization brought by the workflow allows the process to be analyzed. From this analysis, negative points, obstacles and bottlenecks can be identified that hinder the final quality of the results. 

Thus, it is possible to create strategies and reformulate the flow in order to optimize productivity and increase the quality of deliveries. Additionally, the flow makes responsibilities clearer for team members. 

With flow, employees start their day knowing what needs to be done. This organization makes work simpler for employees, who do not suffer from excessive demands, multitasking and lack of time. With all the information gathered in the flow, communication also becomes more efficient. 

This way, the atmosphere between teams becomes lighter, allowing employees to focus less on organizing tasks. With this, the focus becomes the development of strategies to improve flows and the execution of tasks.   

What are the benefits of having a workflow?

As evidenced, having a structured workflow increases productivity and optimizes the quality of results. 

Investing time and effort in building a very detailed flow will bring good rewards for the company: 

• More efficient communication
• Organization of information 
• Division of responsibilities 
• Good use of company resources 
• Projects and tasks overview 
• Reduce delays 
• Agility in processes 
• Decrease in error rate 

How to create a workflow: 

The benefits are numerous, which demonstrates the importance of workflow for a successful company. But how can it be assembled? 

The workflow aims to make processes more efficient. The need to create a flow arises from the analysis and identification of flaws, obstacles and inefficiency in the current process. 

It is important to recognize when something is not going as expected. From there, it becomes easier to build the flow, thinking about optimizing processes.

Check out the steps to building the ideal workflow for your company. 

• Know your processes

The first step is precisely the careful review and analysis of each of the company’s current processes. With this, it is possible to identify which bottlenecks are interfering with the final results. 

Seek to identify the steps, identify the responsibilities of each employee, analyze deadlines and communication between teams and understand how tasks are being performed. It is necessary to pay close attention when identifying what the flaws are, so that they can be resolved with the construction of the flow. 

• Identify improvements 

With the problems identified, it is possible to start structuring improvements, that is, defining how an ideal process would work. Identify what improvements your flow needs to make to ensure the quality of deliveries. 

Also take into account the company’s resources for these improvements. How can they be directed to increase productivity and ensure process efficiency? 

• Build the flow

Once issues have been identified and improvements established, it’s time to build your workflow. Build the steps, establish the tasks and those responsible for them and define deadlines and priorities for each of them. 

Use a task management tool is an alternative to facilitate the construction of the flow. Furthermore, task and project management becomes much more agile and efficient. 

With Gipo, you build your entire workflow with steps and tasks. Furthermore, it links tasks to those responsible and defines deadlines and priorities. 

Automating management tools makes task management easier. This allows teams to focus less on organizing tasks and more on what really matters: developing strategies and executing activities. 

• Revision

Following the steps, the next step in building the flow is review. At this point, it is necessary to reevaluate everything that was built in the flow and put the final touches on the processes. 

Review as many times as necessary. Remember, the construction of the flow will influence the final result of deliveries. Therefore, make sure everything is well organized and planned. 

• Follow-up

Finally, the last step is follow-up. With the workflow in place, it is possible to identify what is working and what is not yet working as expected. 

Don’t worry if the flow isn’t working perfectly at first. Just remember to identify what isn’t working to find solutions. This way, the flow adapts until it is working well.  

With Gipo, in addition to being able to organize the workflow, you can monitor the project’s development in one place. This makes it easier to identify bottlenecks and obstacles so that they can be corrected.