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Workflow

Where does the week go, and does a person need to be doing this?

Area 04 People don't work in silos, so this area uses all the others. It starts with how your team actually works, then takes the repetitive parts off their hands.

Four people, every Monday

"We need another person for the reporting" usually means four people are already copying the same numbers between three systems, every Monday, by hand.

One integration passes the numbers along instead. Nobody's job goes; the copying does, and Monday comes back.

Read: No need to be Rush'n, Come to MoSCoW

Integration. The systems pass the numbers to each other. The four people keep their jobs, and get their Monday back.

Fig. 1 — Four people, three systems, one number. What looked like a staffing problem was a missing connection. Diagram: every Monday, four people copy the same numbers from the shop into a spreadsheet, and from the spreadsheet into a report. One integration line then joins the three systems, and the copying stops. The four people are still there.

Ship on a Friday

Most teams have a rule against changing anything on a Friday, because the last time they did, the checkout broke over the weekend and nobody noticed until Monday.

Tests that click through the site like a person would, on every change, find the broken step before a customer does. Then Friday is just another day.

End-to-end test. A script that uses the site the way a person would, start to finish, on every change.

Fig. 2 — The broken step, found on Friday afternoon instead of Monday morning. Diagram: an automated test clicks through a checkout: open the home page, search for a tent, add it to the cart, apply a discount code, pay with a test card, and see the thank-you page. On the first run the discount code step fails, and the release is held. After the fix, the second run passes all six steps.

What Workflow covers

  • Automation

    The jobs a machine should do: copying, checking, reconciling, reacting.

    • Apps Script
    • Python
    • Zapier
    • Make
    • n8n

  • AI in the workflow

    Agents and assistants that sit inside the tools your team already opens every morning.

    • Microsoft Copilot
    • Gemini
    • Claude and Claude Code
    • ChatGPT and Codex
    • GitHub Copilot

  • Testing and quality

    Tests that click through your site like a person would, every time someone ships. So your team can ship on a Friday, and nobody finds the broken checkout on Saturday.

    • Playwright
    • Puppeteer
    • Ghost Inspector
    • end-to-end · visual regression · monitoring

  • Internal tools

    The small app that replaces the spreadsheet everybody is scared to sort.

    • ClickUp
    • Jira
    • Google Sheets
    • Webhooks
    • Convex
    • Next.js

  • Process, priorities and handover

    Deciding what to build first, and what not to build at all. Then writing it down and walking your team through it, so they can run it after I leave, and actually want to.

    • MoSCoW prioritisation
    • Smallest version that works first
    • RACI: who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed
    • Standard operating procedures

Where the week goes

Every team has work that repeats: the same report, the same check, the same copy and paste. None of it takes long. Together it takes days.

This is one team's week. Watch what happens as the repeating parts are handed to something that doesn't mind doing them.

One team's 40-hour week: 7 hours copying between systems, 4 on the weekly report, 5 checking the site still works, and 5 chasing approvals. Handing those to an integration, a scheduled report, automated tests and a workflow with reminders gives back 21 hours a week, leaving 19 for the work they were hired for. The numbers are illustrative.

The numbers are illustrative; the shape is common.

Writing on workflow

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Where does your team's week go?

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