Interactive guide
Turn the Decision Into a Workflow
Priya Shah asked for a product walkthrough. A decision ran, and the answer came back qualified. So what happens to Priya?
The usual answer is a workflow built by whoever had the tool open. One trigger. One path. No exit except finishing. No idea what to do when two of them fire on the same person, or when the step in the middle is waiting on someone who stopped opening their queue three weeks ago. That workflow does not fail loudly. It works, most of the time, in a way that makes the times it does not work very hard to see. You will build a Workflow Specification: work a person could hand to another team without a conversation. The lab saves your progress in your browser.
Start with a broken answer
Start With the Business Outcome
Chapter 1 of 8 · 10 min
The learning path
One chapter covers the part where the work goes through. The rest cover waiting, stalling, leaving early, coming back later, and the same person arriving twice, which is where a workflow actually spends its life.
From outcome to steps
- 01Start With the Business OutcomeState what the workflow is for, so every rule after it has something to be right or wrong about.10 min · exercise
- 02Define the Trigger and PreconditionsWrite a trigger a person can satisfy honestly, and both halves of the eligibility rule.14 min · exercise
- 03Map the Steps and OwnersGive every step an owner and its own level of autonomy.14 min · exercise
Where the failures live
- 04Design the HandoffsSpecify every boundary, including the one between this workflow and another that holds the same person.12 min · exercise
- 05Add Exit and Suppression RulesWrite every way out, and keep pause separate from stop.14 min · exercise
- 06Define Completion and SLADefine done as a business condition, set an SLA, and name the state where the workflow gets stuck.12 min · exercise
- 07Prevent Duplicate WorkGuarantee one active instance per human, and decide what happens when the same work arrives twice.12 min · exercise
- 08Capstone: Turn Qualification Into Follow-ThroughRun four records through the whole specification, validate it, and approve version 1.0.15 min · exercise