Confirmation before submission
An extra step costs every user a few seconds. It was worth it because the alternative, a wrong request already moving through approvals, costs far more people far more time to undo.
Enterprise workflow experiences
Workflow-automation and review capabilities that let non-specialists build and complete enterprise processes correctly.
- Organisation
- ServiceNow
- Period
- 2020 – 2022
- Area
- Enterprise workflow
Context
Enterprise workflow tools are used mostly by people who do not write software. The product's reach depends on how much can be configured without engineering involvement.
The problem
Two distinct difficulties. Authors need to express real business logic without code, which means the tooling has to expose enough power to be useful without exposing enough to be dangerous. And people completing a request need to catch their own mistakes before submission, because errors found afterwards are expensive to unwind in an approval workflow.
Constraints
- Users could not be assumed to have technical knowledge.
- Interfaces had to meet WCAG 2.0 conformance.
- Changes landed in a mature product with existing customers.
My contribution
Shared ownership stated as such. Nothing here claims sole authorship of a platform.
- Developed workflow-automation capabilities enabling non-specialist users to create and configure enterprise workflows more easily.
- Designed and implemented a review experience for enterprise requests in Workspace, letting users validate information before final submission.
- Resolved accessibility defects to bring workflow interfaces into WCAG 2.0 conformance.
Approach
Give the request a checkpoint before commitment. A review step is a small amount of interface that converts a whole class of downstream corrections into an edit the user makes themselves.
Treat accessibility defects like any other defect, not as a separate initiative. That is what stops conformance sliding back a few sprints after someone fixes it.
Decisions that mattered
The ones with a real cost on the other side.
Outcome
Workflow creation opened up to non-specialist users, and a review experience that helped people validate requests before submitting them.
What generalises
- The cost of preventing an error and the cost of correcting it are rarely comparable.
- Accessibility holds when it is ordinary defect work, not a project.