A workflow is a set of actions, accomplishing an objective.

The word flow must be in it because the set of actions flow one after another, sequentially. Let us consider the work of making tea. Boil water, add tea powder, add sugar if needed – this would be the simple description of it. You’ll see that there’s a flow to it - first boil the water, and then add tea. Not add tea and then boil. A workflow includes not only the actions but the intended order of the actions.

When a person alone makes tea for themself, thinking about the workflow of making tea is nothing but a thought exercise to pass time.Consider the case of industrially serving tea non stop for the fifty guests arriving at your restaurant every five minutes. You will make profit if you can serve tea as fast as you can, and every irate person waiting for their tea will cause you loss.

When there’s a benefit in improving the efficiency of a process or there is a cost in the inefficiency of the process, it is important to think about the workflow itself. To draw the picture one needs a canvas, to improve the workflow, one needs to define the workflow as they know it. Every workflow is a series of actions. Identifying these actions is the first step to see the workflow itself.

We can describe the tea making workflow as follows:

1. Boil water
2. Add tea to boiling water
3. Serve tea in glasses

4. Add sugar if requested

   These actions could be broken down to smaller steps - boiling water , for example, is putting the pan on heat, adding cold water and waiting until it is heated. In our case, since we are now considering a restaurant serving tea, and not a chemical plant boiling the water, ‘Boil water’ can be a single action. It helps to think - how many people would be doing this action , and if it makes sense to divide the labour further down.