Workflow means different things to different people. We have some ideas about what workflow means but for now I'd like this discussion to be more open ended. The central questions is what does workflow mean to you? Specfic examples are helpful. Answers can be abstract or specific to Contour. (a demo of Contour is available)
I'm putting together a post with a draft of our "light" workflow option for drop down lists within Contour.
Anohter example scenario we had talked about (a long time ago) was workflow around baselines.
A base line could be taken of one or more items
Once these items are baselined they are essentially "locked"
Say someone wants to change an item that has been based lined.
They will be prompted that this item is locked and that making a change will kick off a change request.
Once the change request is complete user can then edit the item.
There could be customizations around this like allowing for an override or ignore of the change request.
Of course there could be a whole workflow around the change request...:)
In this context, Change Requests should be kept as "proposed" until some agreed to approval criteria are met - for example, PM review, team review, etc. This could also entail some means of voting for or against the change within the tool.
To me the simplest description of a workflow is the list of steps or stages that must be completed with regard to a task or document. However, within a tool such as Contour, that definition needs to be extended to allowing for assignment of each step to particular users, delegation, notification when a step is assigned and/or completed, as well as acceptance and/or rejection of the tasking.
I think your one sentence description of work flow is very clear. I also really like the idea of acceptance or rejection by the assignee. We definitely see a lot more focus on the people throughout Contour and this concept fits nicely with that.
Thanks for the feedback.
