About Workflows

Neat phases don't reflect reality

The Digital Double Diamond is a simple way to explain your approach. At a high level it shows how you’ll move through the Discover, Define, Design and Deliver phases. Everyone gets it quickly and it gives you a shared starting point.

But projects don’t move in clean, linear phases. Each discipline runs its own cycle of phases, often starting at different times. UX might be completing design just as tech is kicking off discovery. Content might still be defining while development is already delivering.

So when someone says “the programme is in dev”, it isn’t really true. Which feature? Which deliverable? Which team?

If different parts of the programme are in different phases, how do you actually track and report progress in a way that makes sense?

That’s where workflows come in.

IMAGE >>>> a slide with “Programme is in dev” stamped across it, but each discipline clearly shown in different phases (cheeky “False” mark across the claim).

Why workflows matter

Workflows turn that messy reality into something you can actually manage. They give every team a shared structure, so you can see what’s happening, what comes next and how it connects to the bigger picture.

Every workflow is built on a few essentials:

• Backlogs: the launchpad where new tickets land once a previous workflow finishes, ready to be written up, approved, assigned and worked on

• Activities: the steps the work item goes through

• Sign-off gates: checkpoints where governance and QA confirm you are still on track

• Decision points: the moments where the next step is agreed

• Dependencies and jump-off points: the lines that connect one workflow to the next so nothing gets lost in handover

 When these building blocks are in place and agreed across teams, workflows become more than diagrams. They’re living systems you can track, report on and trust to keep programmes under control.

Different workflows will usually align to a specific...

🎯 Granularity – Is this a high-level project brief or a low-level component spec?

Flavour of work item i.e. governance ad hoc, 
👥 Disciplines – BA, UX, Design, Dev, QA — Different disciplines may all collaborate within a single workflow, but usually a single disciline will own a specific activity
🔁 Progress tracking – Real-time delivery pipelines you can report on, not just guess about

So how does this actually work?

Let’s take a ticket in Workflow 5 (Design user Story production > approval > UX Design prodcution).

It starts with a BA or Designer writing a Design User Story using the BDD format
This is approved by the client – that’s Gate 1
It’s handed to a UX designer who creates low-fidelity wireframes
Those are also approved – that’s Gate 2
The workflow is now complete — the ticket is done
A new ticket is triggered in Workflow 6 (Visual Design) or Workflow 6b (Dev Discovery) depending on the next move

See? One ticket spans Define and Design phases of the DDD, but lives entirely within one workflow.
Now imagine multiple workflows running at the same time:
 UX is designing, Devs are discovering, QA is prepping — all at different speeds, with their own rules and rhythms.

How we keep it all together

You don’t track your project by phase.
 You track and should report by workflow — because that’s where the real movement happens.
You report on how many tickets are stuck at Gate 1
You flag workflows that are blocked or overloaded
You know where every team is — regardless of what phase the programme is in.

This information is what gives you the data you need to make strategic decisions to get your programme moving as it should.
Add in your Jira dashboards, automations and reporting views, and suddenly…
 💥 You’ve got a living, breathing, multi-dimensional delivery system.

TL;DR

Workflows give you control across disciplines, phases and levels.
 They let you deliver faster, smarter and with way less chaos.
You bring the team.
 I’ll show you how to keep the galaxy spinning.

Optional CTA Sections
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