Workflow & Business Process Design

Graduation processing for Masters’ and Doctorate students is a delicate and needed for a smoothly running university. The graduation team at the Graduate School at UMBC wanted to transition from a paper-based workflow to a digital process for graduation clearance. As the technical support specialist, I was tasked to help them analyze current processes, design a process, implement it, and train the current staff to adopt the new process.

I used user observation techniques to draw up an analysis report, present findings to the team, and propose a new workflow in the Graduate School’s document imaging system. Completed and authorized forms trigger actions taken in the student administration system, and these forms are scanned and digitally archived. The new workflow design unified the slightly different aspects of each team members’ work.

Implementing and training this new system was especially challenging with a small team that wanted a better way to do things, but was naturally resistant to change. Together, with a number of hands-on training sessions, the team and I strengthened our relationship and adoption of the new system was accepted.  The team has been able to increase accuracy and process completion, as well as user experience with the process as a whole.