“"Workflow" Explained”

Mark Morgan said:

>I need to be more specific with my first question, though. I don't work at
>all in corporate America. What is "workflow"? Mark understands not...

Work flow is the specific process that one uses to complete a repetitive job. It's the series of operations that are performed to complete a task or produce a product.

In the online publishing world, it looks something like this:

1. Editor assigns a writing project to a writer, with a deadline
   
2. Writer writes the copy and submits it to the editor
   
3. Editor suggests some changes
   
4. Author tries to work the Editor's changes into the copy, without sacrificing the intent and sprit of his writing ;-) and then resubmits it to the editor.
   
5. Editor makes a few changes, and fixes the author's atroshus spelling mistakes.
   
6. Editor approves the copy, and it's sent on to the "content guys" to work the copy into a live page
   
7. Content guys find the template for the page, and massage the copy into place. The cycle here is "place copy, preview, fix, preview, fix, preview, fix, preview, fix, preview, fix, preview.... approve"
   
8. Once the page looks right, there may be another "Editorial approval" required.
   
9. Page goes live on the web site.

This work flow is almost identical to the dead-tree magazine/catalog publishing work flow.

So, another term for "work flow" is "work process".

Seth