A checklist for planning business workflow automation

1. Describe the current process

• What event starts the work, and which system is the source of truth?
• What steps happen today, who owns them, and where do people wait or re-enter information?
• Which decisions follow fixed rules, and which need a person’s judgment?
• What are the common exceptions, and how are they resolved?

2. Define the intended outcome

Choose a measure the team can observe, such as time from submission to assignment, number of manual handoffs, or the share of records that need correction. Record the current baseline first. Avoid promising a result before the workflow has been measured in operation.

3. Specify the workflow contract

• Inputs: required fields, formats, access rights, and validation rules.
• Actions: systems changed, records created or updated, and who may trigger each action.
• Approvals: actions that pause for a named person before continuing.
• Exceptions: retry rules, alert recipients, manual review queues, and a way to resume safely.
• Audit: what is logged, who can view it, and how long it is retained.

4. Test the failure paths

Test missing and duplicated inputs, rejected approvals, rate limits, expired access, partial outages, and retries. Confirm that repeating a step does not accidentally create duplicate records or send the same message twice. A workflow should surface a failure with enough context for someone to resolve it.

5. Prepare the handover

Before launch, name an operational owner, document how to pause or resume the workflow, and agree who handles alerts. Review the system with the people who will use and support it. Start with a limited scope, observe the results, and expand only when the exceptions are understood.