A content delivery workflow outlines each stage a content item needs to pass through from brief to content creation, to eventual publication on a website. Defining this process early on in a project, with the relevant people, is key to delivering content on time and in budget. This article looks at how teams can define their own content delivery workflow, using a typical workflow as an example.

A typical content delivery workflow

Every website project is different and the most appropriate way of producing and moving content through a workflow differs. Some sites will need a legal review and others may require the CEO’s sign-off on every page. Perhaps you have to deliver multilingual content. So whilst you have to be prepared to adapt the stages of your workflow, there are common stages across website projects.

Already you might be thinking about how you would change some stages, add some, rename some and so forth. All to make the workflow relevant and useful for your own organisation, team situation, and resource. This is vital to ensure the workflow leads to your overall content operations, or ContentOps, being efficient.

Designing your own bespoke content delivery workflow

The earlier you can design your own process, the better. It can seem like a big investment and a delay in getting to the visuals and design stage. But the more time you invest upfront in your content, the fewer obstacles and challenges you should face during the project lifecycle.

Running a workshop is a great way to design your process whilst engaging key stakeholders. Begin by identifying the goals of your workshop such as:

• Design an appropriate workflow for the project
• Identify content delivery gaps early
• Inform content governance after launch

There are six main tasks that you can cover in the workshop that will help you to achieve these goals in collaboration.

Task 1: Map your content workflow

Ask both teams to capture the appropriate workflow steps for producing the example content item during the website project.Ask them to use a post-it note for each stage (to move them around)

Task 2: Add people

Assign and label a person or role to each stage in their workflow. This will help you identify any unassigned roles and if one person is responsible for multiple responsibilities (which may not be productive or realistic).A good method here is to use colour-coded stick-men or post-its to quickly visualise recurring roles.

Task 3: Identify risks and pain points

Highlight and annotate potential pain-points in your workflow. Consider bottlenecks, known issues, lack of skills, and internal politics.This will help to surface issues such as there being lots of people with a say in the content. It also highlights an unfair workload falling on one person and any shortage of the required skills.

Task 4: Design solutions

Develop ideas that could help to mitigate or smooth out the potential pain points. Consider the use of software, systems, and tools. Ask what are the current techniques and coping strategies for producing content?

Task 5: Estimate time

Estimate in fractions of hours how much Effort each stage may realistically take and total them. Remember to be realistic and go with previous experience.Calculate the actual man-hours of work (Effort) required to complete the stage rather than the span of time (the Duration) it takes for the stage to be completed. Both are important when planning to resource.

• Total up all the stages at the end of the process
• Multiply the total with the anticipated pages on the new site to get an estimate of total Effort for all your content

Task 6: Pitch and critique the workflows

Present your workflow for the rest of the team to critique. Each group walks the whole room through its workflow and invites discussion. Video the presentations to watch back later, take lots of high-res pics of the outputs and back up ASAP.

After the content delivery workflow workshop

Digitise the agreed workflow and disseminate this to all relevant stakeholders, some of whom may not have been involved in the workshop.

Summarise the process that you went through to come to the final workflow. Clearly communicate what the stages are, what needs to be done at each stage and who is responsible for getting those tasks done.

Remember to make sure the latest workflow diagram and supporting docs are easily available to the project team and stakeholders. Hosting your workflow in a central place (like GatherContent!) makes it accessible to the entire team so there is no misunderstanding as to who is responsible for what.