Workflow Best Practices

Keep the following set of best practice recommendations in mind when designing and building workflows:

• Communicate Workflow Changes to Project Teams - If changes are required to a workflow that is saved in the Template Library, communicate those changes to the project teams. Changes made to a workflow are not reflected in workflows that are in process within a project. The workflow must be stopped for the changes to take effect.
• Project Level Changes Sometimes Take Precedence - Changes to the numbers of days for an action completion and the owner assigned to an action within a step are not overridden at the project level if changes have been made there.
• Use Workflows for Document Review Cycles - Workflows are an excellent method to track a document through a review cycle. For example, if the document needs to go through a series of peer reviews prior to the senior manager on a project reviewing it.
• Create Smart Workflows - Smart workflows contain separate sets of metric conditions that determine the following for the workflow:
• If the actions within a workflow step are included or excluded with the project. See Adding Conditions That Determine Workflow Actions Availability.
• When a workflow can start. See Creating Workflows.
• If a project is migrated to one or more other models after the workflow is completed. See Migrating Projects After Workflow Completion.
• Create Master Workflows - Using Smart workflows that contain rules that determine whether workflow actions are included in the workflow, you can create one or more master workflows for use across multiple projects.
• Automate Your Workflows - Use automated steps within your workflow configurations to save your project teams time and manual entry, and to ensure artifacts are recorded and saved for audit purposes.