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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

A Workflow that Promotes Open and Flexible Planning

We all want to keep our work data on the Cloud. That way we can work while we are out and about.

There are so many ways we can do this now, some free some not, some for businesses some for individuals: online storage (SkyDrive, MobileMe, Dropbox, SugarSync, etc.), online services (Evernote, Google Docs, Yammer, etc.), simple email attachments (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.). In any case, it's a great age for working flexible, anytime and anywhere.

This is good not only for productivity, but for creativity as well. Companies may want to prohibit the use of portable media (like USB memory sticks) but they can no longer help but approve cloud computing. The below workflow is for "cloud workers" creating a new product proposal and having it approved, all on the Cloud.



Proposals benefit from peer reviews and team comments. These comments will come in handy when it's time for the boss to provide instructions. Tasks 3 and 3b are looped (planning head approval and confirming send-back) to allow communication between worker and boss.
If you want to involve executive decisions you can use the below workflow.