Workflow

Workflow is the order or sequence in which the tasks and activities of a project are carried out. It sets out what happens first, next and last, so everyone knows how the work fits together.

A key part of a workflow is dependencies. A dependency is a link between two pieces of work: one cannot begin until the other is finished. For example, a Year 10 team is running a school book swap. The team must collect donated books before they sort them into genres, and they must sort the books before they arrange them on the shelves. Arranging therefore depends on sorting, and sorting depends on collecting.

Workflow is used to decide the order of work and to spot which tasks can run in parallel and which must wait. In the book swap example, designing posters to advertise the event can run at the same time as sorting the books, because no one is needed for both jobs. If the same person had to do both, the posters would have to wait until the sorting was finished. The workflow shows these waits and overlaps clearly.

Workflow is about order and links, not clock time. It tells you what must follow what, rather than how long each piece of work will take.