📥 Email is not a workflow

A recent meeting surfaced a problem: BOM changes in the engineering systems were not reliably reaching the production systems. "I told 'em" is how we had been doing things. We told manufacturing about the changes and handed over links to the updated release package, and items still fell through the cracks. Someone asked: "can you automatically email the production people when there is a release?" That helps, but only a little more than "I told 'em," because email is NOT a workflow. At best it is a notification. The problem is not notifying people of things; it is tracking the work.

Workflows have many characteristics, but three stand out in this scenario:

• Priority: Workflow items carry a clear priority. What matters, what is moving now, and what comes next all sit in view.
• Tracking: Current status, recent changes, discussions, and related information live in one place.
• Transparency: Everyone involved sees the list and the status of any item.

Many things qualify as a workflow tool. The simplest starting point is a Kanban board where cards move from left to right: Trello, or issues in GitHub/GitLab/Gitea. Tools are plentiful and often free. The harder shift is thinking in terms of workflows rather than meetings and messages.