Today's sample is a case where one person is in charge of operating a consultation service.
The incoming data includes "name, email address, phone number, inquiry," and the final output is the "reply" by email. For special cases the consultant may want to follow-up with a phone call. Some inquiries may be dealt with immediately (1. Confirm Inquiry (& reply) –> End), while some may take a while, thus require priority and deadline settings (1. Confirm Inquiry –> 2. Write Reply –> 3. Follow-up –> End).
If tasks are divided in this way the consultant can manage his/her own schedule better. For example:
-Mornings: Look through and confirm inquiries
-Early afternoons: Focus on answering inquiries
-Late afternoons: Follow-ups
This is helpful in avoiding taking too much time on a single inquiry. As a bonus, the consultant can use monitoring functions to see the number of inquiries and the time it takes to reply.
By the way, there is a surprising demand to be able to see individual tasks in to-do lists of workflow systems, even for one-man processes. Especially if you are used to playing tag with deadlines!
