Workflows exist in some form at every company, in every industry. Traditionally, the term has been used to describe transactional processes. Credit card information, for example, is submitted on a website. The information is then sent to banks for approval and to a billing system for invoicing, which results in a message being sent to the shipping system for delivery. These types of transaction workflows, primarily relaying data between systems based on a static set of rules, require very little human intervention. They are typically automated using business process management (BPM) software or custom coded applications.
Human-based workflows on the other hand are usually manually managed and tracked. Meetings, phone calls, paper trails, spreadsheets, emails and desktop applications are typically utilized by business professionals as a means to keep the flow of information orderly. In most cases, a lack of efficiency is unavoidable. Using many different tools and methods to track workflows simultaneously leads to chaos. Visibility of a projects status, and more importantly, what is causing its hindrance becomes increasingly ambiguous.
Many human-based...