Workflows! What an enormous topic. Having spent the last two months looking, talking with people and thinking how to go about describing the current state of workflows, I have concluded that, frankly, the state of the workflows in magazine publishing is fragmented. For each fundamental step of the process that I examined, I have come across occasional flashes of brilliance (clever solutions to niggling problems), some companies just making use of the obvious and some where there has only been the darkness of muddled thinking and an obstinate reliance on out-dated practices.
According to Wikipedia
So, let’s start by defining a workflow. My favourite definition comes from the now ubiquitous Wikipedia and it states:
“A workflow is a model to represent real work for further assessment, eg. for describing a reliably repeatable sequence of operations.”
What appeals to me is that the description talks about representing “real work”. A problem for companies who set out to create workflows, is that, all too often, real work gets in the way as it is being investigated and the situation never improves. And improvement, after all, in many guises, is the purpose of the “further assessment” part of the Wikipedia definition.
Economies of scale
Before I elaborate further, let me state that there are two qualifying elements to this commentary. Firstly, I came to realise just how broad the magazine publishing world is and secondly, the up-take of well defined workflow is largely a matter of size. The larger publishers, with a stable of publications, have embraced workflow, most particularly in the production of the pages and in more than one instance have made proper connections between the internal workflow and the workflows in the printers. On the other hand, publishers who are producing only one or two magazines, tended to be more analogue in their processes, using the functions available in the software, but linking the steps by creating odd rules for filing or naming conventions and moving stuff along, sometimes on the strength of a post-it note.
My over-arching observation is that pre-press (repro) is the default area for proper workflow. It is easy to analyse, the software used in the process lends itself to fully or partly automated steps: by and large the staff tend to be closet “geeks” and the output is heavily standardised. This last point is one of the keys to defining steps in the workflow. You see, organisations are wont to develop things for themselves. Often, they believe that the steps in their process are sufficiently varied as to be too difficult to quantify, thus, they set out to write or develop something to solve the problem and make the process easier. However unwittingly, they invariably introduce lots of discreet steps or actions, that, when viewed dispassionately, are complicating the process, but because they developed it, they don’t see these contradictions. Worse still, having done this to themselves, they insist on foisting it upon their suppliers, all in the name of efficiency!
Having, at times, quoted the infamous ‘cuckoo clock’ speech by Orson Welles in the film The Third Man, as to why we shouldn’t slavishly adhere to standards, because they hamper innovation, I now find myself preaching that standards are the way out of this particular quagmire. Standards allow the various groups in the process to talk about the process using the same language. Where things are more ad hoc, the departments that follow the misguided steps invariably spend precious work-cycles fixing small, irritating things that have slipped through; missing logos, lo-res images etc. All these things happen, ’cause someone wasn’t concentrating and the workflow didn’t pick it up.
Workflow does not equal Automation
I’ve come to the conclusion that working without well-defined workflows is counter-productive and a huge waste of money! However, it seems that the one thing that stops companies from adopting proper workflow, is the perception that workflow needs automation, which in turn needs expensive software and / or hardware. Undeniably, this can be the case. It is easier to get a function performed regularly, with metronomic monotony, when it is carried out by a machine. But, workflow is about the steps that need to be taken to get something created. Nothing insists that it is automated; nothing insists that people can’t do it properly. Workflow is about surety; knowing what is supposed to have happened before you got the job and what is supposed to happen after you are finished with your bit. Then, when it doesn’t happen as it ought to, you can analyse the outcome and determine whether the results represent a different, but still appropriate, path or whether it represents plain error.
Most larger publishers do have a thread of connectivity running between departments. Touch points like tying the usage of images to the Rights Management software or ensuring that design values are monitored, or that copy is uploaded, flowed in and measured, all in the context of the whole publication or section and then ultimately the same information is uploaded to the online edition. However, in too many cases, the stories are submitted as an MS Word document (not in itself a bad thing), the text entered into the page using that well known workflow procedure, copy and paste, and the section delivered back to the editorial dept with only an artworker ever seeing how it fits. Invariably, in these cases, the images have been copied from a CD and then a PDF export is run out to a laser printer and then the whole shebang delivered to the printer. All of this works: the pages are produced; the publication gets printed and delivered: everyone is happy. And, it is this simple fact that make installing ‘workflow’ into a small organisation so difficult to enthuse about. It is seen as ‘make work’ at the beginning of the process; plans for plans’ sake and there is very little perceived advantage to doing it. In small teams, messages can be passed from one person to another by standing up and yelling. More to the point, the direct nature of the work, in these small teams, allows individuals to feel needed. Not in the “if I get run over the magazine will fold” kind of a way, but in a “I’ve been told what to do all my life, and now I get to choose”, kind of a way. The problem with situations like these is that when things go wrong, there is so little tangible evidence to work with in order to stop it going wrong again. And that, more than any other factor is why companies need workflows; regardless of how many people there are or how small they are. My issue with some of the processes I saw was that, as a purist, gathering up a bunch of specially-named PDF files in a folder and uploading them to an FTP site to which the printer has access, simply does not constitute workflow! I know that it works; and that things “get done” this way. It might even be a step in someone’s workflow! But often it smacks of settling for second-best. Let me be clear. On more than one occasion I have argued that the way to move a process along is to get someone to carry, or read something, even count the sheets of paper in a box, and I’m aware that not everything has to be automatic or automated, but in publishing workflows, unmeasured steps just aren’t good enough anymore.
Post-it notes
Now, how to improve what you’ve got? More than anything, when asked, I advise people to break the process down. Start with one process and then spread out in one direction or the other. The purpose is to cover all the steps, eventually . Too many organisations do the first bit and then stop. So, let me ask this one little favour of all the workflow “engineers” out there, working in the rough underbelly of magazine publishing. Please, stop for just one day: take a pad of post-it notes and, on a suitably clear wall, start to look at all the steps required to produce your publication. Look at them in the self-evident silos: Editorial (divided into internal people who contribute copy and articles regularly and itinerants (like me) who pop up but don’t stay); Design (look at all the steps in that process); then Repro; etc. etc. Once you have as many discreet steps as you can find, start gathering them into silos of common attributes (all these people approve pictures…). Write down even those activities that seem trivial. The point is to make yourself look up and downstream; what can you do that will help the next process, but might just as well help the process that comes before you. What can you do to make their lives easier? Who knows, if they had more time, they might give you a better quality product! Also, when writing all these notes, try to remember what last went wrong and what the cure was. Imagine, if it happened again, how would you get to the conclusion you ended up with, quicker? Look at that solution and see if adhering to any of the industry standards or initiatives, could help you tidy it up further. Tell all your suppliers the standards you are adhering to!! Try to remember that workflow is usually a chain of events, inextricably linked. It is rarely a checkers board, where the player can leap over things and most workflows fare poorly if steps are missed out. Missing things out will only hurt later. Lastly, try to do something that can be linked to other technology already in use by other departments: islands of technology usually remain islands!
