Delivery Workflow Standardization

The Problem

The agency’s staff were capable and experienced in their respective functions, but logistical operations moved through phases (intake, assessment, assignment, execution, closeout) without any standardised handoff between them. When a task completed one phase, the next team often didn’t know it was ready for them until someone followed up manually. That gap averaged two days per transition, and with multiple phases per operation, delays compounded quickly. Only 54% of operations were being delivered on time.

Reporting was a separate but related burden. Supervisors were spending five hours each week assembling status updates from emails, shared drives, and verbal check-ins. This process produced information that was already out of date by the time it was read.

The Approach

We began with an audit of eighteen months of completed operations, looking at where delays had occurred and what the common preceding conditions were. The pattern was consistent: work stalled at phase boundaries. Tasks would complete on one team’s queue and sit unactioned for two days before the receiving team was notified. There was no structured handoff, no visibility into what was ready to move, and no automated signal that anything had changed.

The solution was built on the agency’s existing Microsoft stack. SharePoint was the workflow backbone with React interfaces for task management, and Microsoft Graph for the reporting pipeline. When a task is marked complete in one phase, the next phase owner receives an immediate notification and the task appears in their active queue. No email, no follow-up call, no two-day wait. Milestone gates enforce the definition of done at each transition rather than leaving it to individual judgement.

Automated reporting replaced the weekly manual assembly: supervisors now review a dashboard that pulls live from SharePoint rather than chasing status across inboxes. The five-hour weekly job became a five-minute review.

The Solution

A workflow management system built on the agency’s existing Microsoft stack, standardising how logistical operations move through phases and how their status is reported.

• Phase transition notifications: when a task is marked complete in one phase, the next phase owner receives an immediate alert and the task appears in their active queue.

  Mitigates: completed work sitting on one team’s desk for two days before the next team knew it was ready for them.

• Milestone gates: each phase transition enforces a defined checklist before work can be marked done and passed forward.

  Mitigates: tasks moving forward before they were actually finished, creating rework and delays that compounded further down the line.

• SharePoint-backed task management: a React interface on top of SharePoint gives each team a single view of their active queue, priority, and phase status.

  Mitigates: nobody knowing where anything stood without making a phone call or chasing down an email thread.

• Microsoft Graph reporting pipeline: supervisors access a live dashboard assembled automatically from SharePoint data.

  Mitigates: five hours every week spent assembling a status report that was already out of date by the time anyone read it.

• OAuth-secured access: role-based access through existing Microsoft identity means no separate credentials to manage.

  Mitigates: the resistance that comes with asking staff to learn yet another login, and the security risk of unmanaged access to operational data.