When a workflow breaks, the instinct is to look at the tools, the people, or the process documentation. Usually the problem is none of those things. It's the handoff: the moment when work moves from one person or team to another. Handoffs are where assumptions live, and assumptions are where things go wrong.
Why handoffs are invisible ¶
Process documentation almost never describes handoffs in detail. It describes what each person does in their own lane. The moment of transfer, who initiates it, what format the work is in, what the receiving party does to confirm they have it, all of that is usually undocumented. It's assumed. And because it's assumed, when it breaks, nobody knows whose problem it is.
The swim-lane test ¶
Draw your process as a swim-lane diagram. One horizontal lane per person or team. Draw the steps in each lane. Then look at the arrows that cross between lanes. For each one, ask: who initiates this transfer? How? What does the receiving party do to confirm receipt? If you can't answer all three, you've found a gap. In our experience, most teams find two or three of these in the first pass.
The 'I thought you had it' conversation ¶
There's a specific conversation that happens in broken workflows. It goes: 'I thought you had it.' 'No, I thought you had it.' This conversation is a symptom of an unowned handoff. The fix isn't to blame either party. It's to write down, explicitly, who owns the initiation of each transfer and what 'done' looks like for the sending party.
What to do once you've found the gap ¶
The fix is usually simple once the gap is named. Add a step. Assign ownership. Define the trigger. The hard part is getting everyone to agree on the new version and actually change their behaviour. This is where most DIY workflow fixes fail: the redesign is right but the adoption is incomplete. Build in a two-week check-in after any handoff change to see if it's actually holding.
When to bring in outside eyes ¶
You can find most handoff gaps yourself with the swim-lane method. The case for outside help is when the gap is politically sensitive, when the people involved have conflicting accounts of what the process is, or when you've tried to fix it before and it reverted. An outside perspective removes the social dynamics from the diagnosis.
The Workflow Audit and Redesign is built around exactly this method. Three days embedded in your process, a swim-lane map of what actually happens, and a redesign proposal. Details on the full list of engagements.