How To Build Successful Team Workflows In 6 Steps

Working with a team is not easy—a lot of time and efforts goes into collaboration, getting everyone up to speed, and pivoting on a dime. The team workflows you put in place to help manage team interactions can make or break the success of your initiative.

This process is made a lot easier if you manage team workflows with workflow management software or workflow automation software.

What Is A Team Workflow?

A team workflow is the process your team uses to collaborate and complete tasks in pursuit of a collective goal. It covers how tasks are defined, executed, managed, and completed, and it should be repeatable throughout and across projects.

Team Workflow Example

Here’s an example from marketing. The team includes a digital project manager, marketing strategists, content creators, graphic designers, developers, and an online community manager—all brought together on a marketing project management platform.

Here’s what a project workflow might look like for a marketing campaign, from concept to operational release. 

1. Campaign planning and strategy: The marketing strategists and content team define campaign goals (e.g. more product sales), identify the target audience, and decide which digital channels to use. They create a campaign strategy that outlines key messages, resource allocation, budget, strategic objectives, and timelines. 
2. Content creation and design: The content and design team produce the creative assets (e.g. articles, videos, and social media posts) based on the goals of the campaign. The project manager checks that content is ready to publish and correctly branded and formatted. 
3. Technical implementation: The technical members of the team setup landing pages, controllable web assets, and analytics and measurement tools, They also might integrate this with the company’s CRM systems and prepare any workflow automation sequences.
4. Campaign execution: The team launches the campaign across digital platforms and monitors the rollout closely, adjusting as necessary based on real-time data and results.
5. Monitoring and analysis: Data analysts and ad specialists track the performance of the campaign using predefined metrics. This involves gathering and analyzing data from various channels, creating reports to communicate the results, and keeping track of improvements for next time.
6. Review and Iteration: Review the results of the campaign with stakeholders and identify what went well and what could be improved in the future. You'll also plan adjustments for future campaigns based on your learnings. 

This workflow might look similar to a high-level project plan, but the difference is that a team workflow is intended to be used repeatedly. So when the team needs to launch another digital campaign, they can use this team workflow again to keep everyone on track. 

Find more examples of workflows here.

Why It’s Important To Manage The Team’s Workflow

Here are a couple of reasons why it's important to manage your team’s workflow: 

• Get everyone on the same page: Managing the team’s workflow helps all team members gain a clear understanding of the project goals, deadlines, and processes. Mitigate confusion and align the team's efforts by getting them on the same page and clear on what needs to happen.
• Enhance accountability: Everyone knows what is expected of them and you can easily track performance against these expectations. This level of clarity helps create a sense of responsibility and encourages people to take ownership of their tasks. 
• Reduce wasted work: Effective team workflow management helps you streamline processes, eliminate redundant or duplicative tasks, and make sure resources are allocated efficiently. This can speed up project execution and reduce wasted effort and sunk costs. 
• Improve adaptability: A well-defined and managed workflow is an agile workflow. It's flexible so that teams can respond to changes along the way. Changes in project scope (e.g. scope creep), resourcing, or external factors that might have thrown the team off can be taken in stride. 
• Encourage continuous improvement: Update the team’s workflow to match the needs of the team and the project at the given time. This helps you address bottlenecks or inefficiencies and find opportunities for process optimization, which can lead to increased positive performance over time. 

How To Create A Team Workflow

To create a workflow, identify what needs to be done, who needs to be involved, and what exactly needs to be done, and then test, refine, and implement it.

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1. Determine the Goal of the Workflow

Define the specific objectives that you aim to achieve with the workflow. This could be creating a repetitive process to launching campaigns (like in the above example), developing software, or creating new products. 

Clear and measurable goals will help you tailor the workflow to your team’s needs, avoid the urge to “boil the ocean” (i.e. take on too much at once), and determine whether your workflow is achieving its desired results. 

2. Identify Which Team Members Need To Be Involved

Identify the roles and responsibilities for each part of the workflow to make sure both you and your team are clear on who is responsible for each portion—remember, allocating marketing resources correctly is key!

Tip

Software tools make the process of allocating, assigning, and scheduling resources a lot easier, and many offer automations that can reduce repetitive and manual tasks. Here’s a list of marketing resource management software to check out as a starting point.

Make it real by creating some documentation showing everyone’s name, role, and photo. People love to feel included and this visual representation can help bring people together and create a sense of collective ownership, especially when working remotely. 

3. List Tasks and Steps in the Process

Gather the people that will be involved and plan out how you'll achieve the goal. Break down the workflow into detailed tasks and steps. Each should be actionable and necessary to reach the workflow’s goals.

Use verbs to characterize tasks such as draft, review, edit, develop, approve, test, or publish/deploy, to clarify exactly what needs to be done. Add details about who will execute each task or step in the process and document this. I love to use a RACI chart for this part of planning and workflow creation. 

4. Create a Diagram of the Workflow

Map out the workflow visually using diagrams and flowcharts. I always like to do workflow mapping on paper first to make sure I can present it in the best and clearest way possible. 

For example, in a previous role where I developed customer support processes for a large software company, I created visual workflows depicting each customer service team process. I used verbs and action-oriented workflow step titles with decision points, desired outcomes, and responsible parties for each.

5. Test & Adjust The Workflow

Before full implementation, test the workflow on a small scale to identify any issues or bottlenecks. Be ready to make adjustments based on feedback from any and all participants! 

This helps to de-risk the process and make sure you identify and resolve any snags in the early days of the process before things get too complicated or the volume makes things unwieldy. Have once-per-week check-ins with the core team to understand how things are going and make changes on the fly.

After making any changes, update all artifacts and inform the team. If you make big changes, run a secondary pilot or test of the team workflow.

6. Implement The Workflow & Keep Iterating

Continuous monitoring and iteration help you make sure that the workflow remains relevant and efficient as conditions change. Remember to document any changes you make, and consider whether you can use this workflow as a template for the next time you need to build a similar one.

Tips For Improving Your Workflows

Here are some tips for developing, maintaining, iterating, and optimizing workflows for effectiveness. 

1. Carefully Consider Technology 

I advise against planning and designing your workflows in software from the start because it is easy to get overwhelmed and you can lose sight of the truly important elements of planning. Start with pen and paper instead.

Once you understand your workflow well enough to use tools, be selective. Choose tools that fit the immediate needs of the team and that integrate seamlessly with your workflows and other systems in use. Evaluate each tool's features against your workflow requirements and consider user-friendliness.

You might find you need a mix of project management tools or project planning tools, workflow mapping tools, and collaboration systems to help manage workflows and business processes. When in doubt, sticky notes make a great Kanban board! 

2. Document Everything

If you want people to know what is going on , you must document what is supposed to happen, why it is supposed to happen, and who is supposed to do it. Thorough workflow documentation helps with transparency and accountability, and can be invaluable for onboarding new team members or reviewing project history. 

Expert Tip

Checklists might sound basic, but they can be your best friend for creating and managing workflows. They help everyone understand exactly what was or was not done with a quick yes/no indicator.

If you don’t like documentation or don’t feel comfortable developing it, I recommend writing tools like Grammarly or ChatGPT. Another clever way to use ChatGPT for documentation is to create or use a specifically trained GPT that understands what you are trying to accomplish and in what format.

3. Integrate Customer Feedback

Feedback from customers about throughput, service, or other elements of support may be an indicator of an issue within your team workflow. 

Develop opportunities for customers to provide feedback, and implement a process to analyze and respond to customer feedback as an input for iteration. Solicit customer feedback to get a mix of positive and negative feedback, and use surveys and focus groups to get specific feedback. 

4. Prioritize Flexibility and Adaptability

Design team workflows that are inherently flexible and allow for adjustments as workflow needs, team dynamics, or external environments change. Set up regular checkpoints to assess workflow adaptability and make adjustments as needed.

I tend to make many changes in the early stages of the workflow’s implementation, and then once it is stable, I keep an eye on it longer-term through quarterly or semi-annual reviews. I also promptly review any specific customer, stakeholder, or team member feedback. 

5. Focus on Roles, Not Just People

Focus on the role each person serves within the organization, so that if someone leaves, you still have clarity on the responsibilities of their role. This will also make it easier to get a new team member up-to-speed quickly. 

Expert Tip

Layoffs often strike team workflows and projects in unexpected ways. When people are removed from an organization and not replaced, those who remain on cross-functional teams are left without their knowledge, skills, experience, and capacity.

Here are some tips for how to re-group after an unexpected change such as a layoff: 

1. Quickly reassess the remaining people and roles and identify the gaps. Work with managers and leadership to spread work among existing team members. 
2. Increase the frequency and clarity of communication within the team and across departments, especially for cross-team workflows. 
3. Offer additional training and support to remaining team members and members of the team that are taking on new roles or responsibilities. This can ease the transition and mitigate significant drops in morale. 
4. Continue to review the effectiveness of your process and interventions to keep things moving forward. Be open to feedback and be prepared to change your workflow to match the adjusted capability of your team. 

What's Next?

If you have team workflows that you love or think work really well, I want to hear about them! Join me in the DPM Community to share stories of success and failure and learn with us.