Workflows - How Technology is Changing The Way We Manage Projects

According to Gartner, business process management (BPM) is a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve and optimize business processes. Furthermore, a business process coordinates the behavior of people, systems, information, and things to produce business outcomes in support of a business strategy. These processes exist in every area of a business, even if they are not recognized or formally defined. Think of simple accounting processes for an engineering firm…

What is depicted above involves multiple business processes, employees, and systems between the engineering firm and client. Workflow technology facilitates these business processes.

Workflows can help new or existing processes

Organizations of all sizes can benefit from workflow technology and the steps taken to define them. To create a workflow, one must first step back and fully define and document the end-to-end process. While this may seem obvious, what many organizations discover during this exercise is no individual or department knows every step. Many individuals or departments know their own part, but not upstream or downstream steps. Nor do they appreciate how their part impacts upstream or downstream participants. Bringing all process stakeholders together often reveals flaws, duplicative effort or wasted effort. I have often heard from one department to another “why are you providing this information at this step, it is unnecessary”. Along with a common response, “this is how we have always done it”. These sessions often yield process optimizations even before any technology is applied. Documenting and communicating the optimized process is essential to gain full benefit of the exercise. This provides guidance for existing and future process participants/stakeholders.

Plats!

Oddly enough, some of the more complex process review sessions I have participated in involve the production of property plat drawings or “plats”. For those that are well versed in producing plats this may not surprise you. Producing plats requires quite a few stakeholders, which may explain their complexity. These teams often work for different firms, which only adds to knowledge and communication gaps. Typical stakeholders and respective responsibilities include:

• Engineering/GIS/Mapping
  • Centerline
  • Workspaces
• Right-of-Way/Land
  • Line List
  • Titles/Deeds
  • Court Filing
• Survey
  • Drafting
  • Distances and Acreage Calculations
  • Legal Descriptions

Let’s explore a plat production example...

The easy part

For these types of processes involving different teams/departments and potentially firms it is critical to define and standardize inputs, outputs, roles, responsibilities, and communication channels & triggers. Once established, applying technology becomes the easy part. Workflow technology facilitates the defined process by providing rigidity for the steps, progress measurement, prescribed communications, ball in court transparency, and an audit trail. Workflows allow users to configure input, define settings, attachments, and validations required for each step. Each step can have predecessors, successors, branches, loops, and communications. Workflows can be configured to use various triggers, for example monitoring a network share for the creation of a file to initiate the process. Users can be assigned roles and permissions specific to their functions in the workflow. Lastly workflows can report status at every step, creating an audit trail. Workflow technology reduces risk, enhances control, improves collaboration, increases compliance and above all keeps everyone on the same page.

Technology that can help

Project Management: Orbital Projects

Orbital Projects is a tool that helps you execute your project well. It now includes a powerful and flexible workflow builder to tackle any business process. This in addition to project management reporting, mapping and data management tools. These combine to give you an accurate picture of where your project is today, and what needs to be done next.

Drawing Automation: Skyline Plat

Skyline now has the tools to generate plats automatically. Complete with smart scaling, labeling and more. Intelligent automation gives you the tools you need to be faster than ever and to take control of your projects.