Field notes · July 16, 2026 · 2 min read
How to pick the one workflow worth fixing first
The hardest part of a five-day sprint usually isn't the five days — it's picking what to spend them on. Most staffing teams don't have a shortage of broken workflows; they have a surplus, and no clean way to decide which one to fix first without it turning into a month of debate.
Four questions cut through that faster than a full audit does.
Is it repetitive? A one-time headache isn't worth five days. A process that happens every day, or every candidate, or every placement, is — because the fix compounds every time it runs afterward.
Does it have a clear owner? Someone on the team should be able to describe exactly how the workflow works today, step by step, without checking with anyone else. If no one can explain it end to end, that's a sign the workflow itself is the problem, and it needs mapping before it needs fixing.
Can it actually be improved in five days? Not perfected — improved. A workflow tangled up with three other systems and two other teams' processes is a bigger project. A workflow with a clear start, a clear end, and one or two handoff points in between is exactly sized for a sprint.
Will the team actually use the fix? The best-built improvement is worthless if the person doing the work reverts to the old way within a week. The workflow worth picking is one where the people closest to it are already frustrated enough to want a different way of doing it — not one being fixed at them.
Run any candidate workflow through those four questions and the field usually narrows fast. What's left is rarely the workflow that looks most impressive to fix — it's the one that's been quietly eating an hour a day for a year, with one person who could describe it perfectly if anyone asked.
That's the one worth bringing to a sprint.