Workflows & automation · JNAGA perspective
How do you find the real workflow when the process map is incomplete?
The official process describes how work should happen. The useful starting point is how it actually gets done.
Published 25 September 2026
Imagine a service map says requests pass directly from intake to approval. In practice, a coordinator keeps a private list of missing documents and chases people before an approver ever sees a case.
Removing the list without understanding its purpose would make the service worse. Trace several cases and build a supported way to handle incomplete requests before automating the official route.
Follow a few complete cases
Choose an ordinary case, a delayed case and an exception. For each, ask what information arrived, who acted, where it waited and which decision moved it forward. Compare the record in the system with the email, spreadsheet or conversation that made progress possible.
People often adapt a process to protect a customer or avoid an error. Treat an informal step as evidence of a missing need, not automatically as non-compliance or resistance.
Find the decision beneath the workaround
A shadow spreadsheet may track an important status the main system cannot represent. A private message may be the only way to resolve an ambiguous ownership question. Ask what would happen if that workaround disappeared tomorrow. The answer reveals what any replacement must preserve or improve.
Look for variation between teams. Sometimes the formal process is sound but training is incomplete; sometimes different teams genuinely serve different situations. A single diagram should not erase useful distinctions.
Redraw the work with its owners
Make the revised path legible to the people who use it, including the normal route and how exceptions return. Only then decide what should be simplified, supported by software or automated. A trustworthy map is a shared account of responsibility, not merely a neat drawing.