Workflow Confession
Calendar invite. No agenda.
Senior consultant. Right. Does anybody know why we’re here?
…No? Sound.
Walk in the meeting with absolutely no context,
Nine little faces doing corporate object.
Someone says “Confluence?” — man doesn’t flinch,
He’s been round the enterprise software circuit.
“If Confluence is where you do documentation,
I’ll do it in Confluence.” No hesitation.
“If you want more docs,
I’ll do it in 365.” Man’s software-agnostic and frighteningly alive.
“I’ve used all these tools,
just tell me the system,
Tell me how I’ll work and I’ll work within ’em.” Meanwhile we’re
nodding like yes, precisely,
Nobody knows why this meeting invited me.
Tell me how I work within your system,
Confluence, Jira — mate,
I’ve used ’em. No context,
no brief, but we all look wise,
Give it the sniff test,
then enterprise. Map that workflow,
boxes and lines, Nobody knows what we’re doing — that’s fine.
Senior man says “Here’s how I’m thinking,” Twenty minutes later the architecture’s
linking.
First Jira drafts it,
then Claude decomposes, Statement of work as the workflow growses— Four clean
commits with review at each stage,
Corporate inception on a Confluence page.
Brainstorm, scope, then break that thing,
Same framework works for everything.
Ten different features, context gets switched,
Same grand process, different commits.
Hcare data? That’s where it gets funny,
Ask every trust for the same damn summary.
One sends pneumonia, one sends gastro,
One sends seventeen spreadsheets from Glasgow.
“You can’t homogenise anything in healthcare.” Silence in the room like a
philosophical prayer. Different inputs,
different story every time— Put another rectangle on the workflow line.
“I’m a visual guy.”
Flowcharts. “I like that kind of stuff.” Flowcharts.
“Once we’re aligned, then we’ll turn it into code.”
FLOWCHARTS. “It’s faster changing text than rewriting a class.”
…Actually, fair.
First get it schematised,
inputs and routes, Where does it live?
What system computes? OneDrive?
Integrated?
Storage scheme?
Suddenly this meeting has developed a theme.
Then business case engine,
nail that well,
Crack the code and everything scales.
Tender to tender, opportunity stack,
Finish one cool thing,
put the next on the backlog.
And I’m sitting there thinking,
nine-thirty-five, We entered with no clue,
somehow there’s a drive.
No concrete answers, but the plan looks immense— Boxes got arrows,
so it’s starting to make sense.
Tell me how I work within your system,
Confluence, Jira — mate,
I’ve used ’em. No context,
no brief, everybody look wise,
Give it the sniff test — enterprise.
No agenda when we walked through the door,
Now we’ve got phases one,
two, three and four.
Nobody knew what the meeting was for— But we’ve got a workflow
now.
So obviously
we’re sorted.