Workflow Sample: Episode 572: Business Improvement in Website Operation (Part 2)

Operation: Review / Proofread

I changed it to work flow that "other writers" also participate in article review. (Reference Episode 571: Business Improvement in Website Operation (Part 1))

The writers interact each other "comments that lead to skill improvement" such as "opinion on the structure" or "alternative idea for headlines or title", while "point out mistakes to be corrected" such as typographical errors or errors in names or dates.

"Editors" has reduced the time spent on reviewing articles or instructing to writers, so that he can have time to think about "ideas for new feature" and to hold "study meetings".

At those "study meetings", actual mistake examples are reported, and discussed. actual mistake examples are reported. The steady improvement in skills will lead to 'productivity improvement'.

Challenge: Holding for Long Period

However, for the writers, it may be a problem that chances of reworking on sent back work are increased, rather than jobs of proofreading are joined.

In particular for a rookie writer, cases where multiple articles simultaneously come back to the Step of "2x. Rework" also occurred. And, in such a case, it becomes a situation that "time to review articles written by other writers" can not be taken...

Hmm, I think that it is better not to allow staying, by setting a deadline date and time on "3. Check" so that forcibly advance to the next Step.

[Article Proofreading-Time limitation]

Solution: Setting Time Limit

It is a common business improvement that to arrange "Steps to improve output quality" in the middle of business flow.

The human Step of "reviewing" in this example has improvement effects such as not only 1) the article itself is corrected but also 2) improving skills of each writer through proofreading.

However, it can not be said that we should deal with it for a long period of time.

That is, if the process is "not really indispensable," it may be necessary to consider a mechanism for progressing to the next Step upon deadline.
(Cancellation by Timer boundary event)

In the Step of "3. Check" in this example, it is set that the deadline time is "18 hours after reaching this Step" (18 hours after this Task is created), upon that point the Task is aborted. That means, it is configured to avoid situation where Issues in "My Task" will increase unnecessarily.

Discussion: Automatic Setting of Deadline Time

It is an effective method to avoid massive retention that roughly classifying human Steps into;

"A) Steps which must be carried out" and
"B) Steps which are not necessary to be carried out but should better if treated",

and set the time limit in B the latter .

However, when 'the fixed time lapse' is set as a rule, if a case, for example, "intentionally flowing to B step on Friday evening aiming for skipping B step" occurs, it is contrary to the purpose.

In such a case, it may be necessary to devise such as "to set a longer time to close (deadline)" or "to develop a script for deadline time calculation according to work rules". (Reference: M230 AUTOMATED STEP: Auto Executing Complicated Data Processing (ECMAScript))

* Of course, simply "18 hours after arrival" is still acceptable, if the work rule allows such as "a reviewer checks lightly on own smartphone even on Saturdays or Sundays".

[Article Proofreading-Time limitation:"3. Check" screen]