What Are Visual Workflows? Examples & Best Practices

Visual workflows automate and translate complex business processes into easy-to-understand visuals. They make communication and task management easier, so us project managers can remove bottlenecks, improve the flow of work on our projects, and help the team be more efficient. 

Visual workflows and process automation are important if you’ve ever struggled with process management, getting your spreadsheets in order, managing approval processes, project workflow management, or automating repetitive tasks.

What Is A Visual Workflow?

A visual workflow is a simple representation of a process that shows how tasks progress from one stage to the next. This makes it easy to understand, manage, and track tasks, as well as business processes, CRM activities, project bottlenecks, and even the software life cycle.

What Types of Projects Use Visual Workflows?

Visual workflows, also known as flowcharts or process diagrams, are used for many types of project initiatives, regardless of methodology or industry. 

Traditional project management (TPM) follows a linear, sequential process. It often uses the waterfall model or PRINCE2, which have predefined phases and fixed scopes. Here, workflow management supports a shared understanding of project performance and delivery. 

Visual workflows used in traditional project management include Gantt charts, process flow diagrams, PERT charts, work breakdown structures (WBS), and network diagrams. 

Agile project management adapts to changing needs in dynamic environments. It is iterative and flexible, and it allows for continuous feedback and adjustments. Collaboration and adaptive planning are the main principles, and methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, and lean are used. 

Agile distributes ownership among team members so responsibilities are shared. Examples of visual workflows in agile project management are Kanban boards, Scrum boards, workflow diagrams or flowcharts, and task boards. 

Is the project managing you?

Sign up to get weekly insights, tips, and other helpful content from digital project management experts.

Your email*

This field is hidden when viewing the form

Consent

Yes, I want to sign up to receive regular emails filled with tips, expert insights, and more to build my PM practice.

By submitting you agree to receive occasional emails and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time. Protected by reCAPTCHA; Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Comments

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Visual Workflow Examples

I have included four unique examples and use cases for visual workflows that illustrate how they can improve transparency, efficiency, and collaboration on your projects. 

Project Management Workflow

Project management workflows are used to outline the project life cycle: defining tasks, assigning responsibilities, tracking progress, and making sure project milestones are achieve and completed in a timely manner.

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Workflow

SDLC workflows include seven phases: planning and analysis, requirements gathering, design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance (or decommission). Visualizing these steps help your team manage even the most complex software projects. 

Marketing Campaign Workflow

Visual workflows for marketing campaigns include tasks like planning, content creation, social media scheduling, and performance analysis. They allow the marketing team to coordinate their efforts throughout the project.

Design Project Workflow

Design workflows involve ideation, wireframing, prototyping, revisions, and final delivery. Visual representations help designers collaborate on work.

Benefits of Visual Workflows

Here are some of the many benefits of using visual workflows:

• Improved clarity: Visual workflows break down complex projects into simpler, more easily understandable chunks that you and your team can tackle step-by-step.
• Better accountability: With a shared view of the workflow, the whole team knows exactly who is working on what and the intended outcome. This encourages team members to step up and own the work that their name is on.
• Improved communication: The visual workflow provides a single source of truth for what needs to happen during the process. This helps reduce misunderstandings, and team members are more likely to speak up when things are going off track or a bottlenecks arises.
• Increased productivity: Visual workflows make it easy to see where your process is getting delayed or going off the rails. This easy identification also makes it easier to implement a fix and increase the amount of work that the team can take on.

Best Practices For Creating Visual Workflows

When creating new workflows for your project management initiatives (or optimizing existing workflows), use these best practices—they are applicable for everything from simple to complex digital workflows.

1. Start small: Start with a portion of a process to test, and gather feedback before expanding.
2. Simplicity: Keep your workflow simple, relevant, and accessible.
3. Clarity: Each stage in the workflow should be concise.
4. Flexibility: Keep your workflow modular to best adapt to changes.
5. Identify a suitable design: Make sure the workflow design is appropriate for the type of workflow you're visualizing.
6. Support relationships: Make sure each item in the workflow is within scope and holds a clear relationship with at least one other task.
7. Use automation software: Set up automations and include checklists, instructions, and any other necessary information needed to complete tasks.
8. Evaluate: It may take a few iterations before you have the optimal version of your workflow.

Best Workflow Management Software

1. 

   Wrike

   This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

   4.2

   Visit Website
2. 

   monday.com

   This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

   4.6

   Visit Website
3. 

   Process Street

   This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

   4.6

   Visit Website

Tools For Visualizing Workflows

Visual workflow automation tools are the best way to visually represent your processes and set up automations to increase productivity. You can also make use of workflow diagram software tools for workflow mapping and creating diagrams, flowcharts, or other visual aids to illustrate the steps in a process and the relationships between them. 

Look for other key features of process workflow software like drag-and-drop task management, collaboration, and software integration.

Here are some of my favorite tools for visual workflow management: 

It is always worth your time to research the best flowchart software and trial a few tools to see which supports your use case. Explore demos and free trials, and make sure to add the trial expirations to your calendars.

Join For More Workflow Management Insights

Want to connect with other digital project managers to share resources and best practices? Join our membership community and get access to 100+ templates, samples, and examples and connect with 100s of other digital project managers in Slack.