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Are We Overengineering Our Processes?

by Sep 3, 2025Process Improvement

There’s a quiet crisis brewing in council offices across Australia and New Zealand.

No, it’s not another spreadsheet shared without edit permissions (though that’s up there).

It’s something sneakier: overengineering. Yep, we said it.

The well-meaning drive to fix a workflow often turns into something… monstrous. What started as a simple three-step process suddenly has 27 actions, four approval layers, two integrations, and a flowchart that looks like spaghetti.

And the kicker? It’s still not working.

How did we get here?

Blame good intentions.

  • Someone wanted to add an extra sign-off “to be safe.”

  • Another wanted to integrate with a tool they used once.

  • Someone else built it in a low-code platform with more branches than a gum tree.

Now the process takes three times as long, staff hate using it, and IT spends half their week maintaining it.

This isn’t improvement. It’s process bloat.

The symptoms of an overengineered process

Wondering if your workflow’s gone off the deep end? Here’s what to watch for:

  • Nobody knows how it works. Even the person who built it has a flowchart printed on their wall.

  • It breaks all the time. Dependencies fail, logic clashes, and even small changes cause chaos.

  • New staff avoid it. Or worse, they create their own workaround in a separate spreadsheet.

  • You dread updating it. Because every change triggers a chain reaction of fixes.

Sound familiar?

Why simpler is smarter

Let’s say it loud for the people in the back: simple processes get used.

If your goal is faster service delivery, better compliance, and less admin pain, simplicity isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential.

Simple doesn’t mean basic. It means clear, user-friendly, and flexible.

Flowingly customers consistently find that:

  • Their most effective workflows have fewer than 10 steps.
  • Automation works best when it reduces choices, not adds them.
  • The best forms don’t ask for 18 fields of data “just in case.”

Building lean, not complex

Here’s how to stop overengineering before it starts:

Start with the outcome

What’s the goal? If it’s “make onboarding faster” focus on that.

Involve the people who use it

Don’t build in a vacuum. Talk to the people doing the work.

Cut steps without guilt

If a step doesn’t serve a purpose, it goes.

Test it with a new hire

If they can follow it without asking questions, you’re winning.

Why this matters in local government

Councils aren’t short on challenges: tight budgets, high compliance standards, and not enough hours in the day.

Overengineering eats into all three.

We’ve seen councils:

  • Spend months building a process no one uses

  • Lose institutional knowledge when the builder leaves

  • Miss out on actual improvements because the workflow became untouchable

Meanwhile, other teams are rolling out mapped and automated processes in weeks—because they kept it lean.

The Flowingly approach – simple by design

With Flowingly, you don’t need to be a developer to build something great. But we also don’t let you go overboard:

  • Visual mapping keeps you honest. If it looks confusing, it is.

  • Templates help you start small. Not every process needs 15 conditions.

  • Audit trails and SOP panels keep things clean. No need for extra layers just to meet compliance.

We’re here for clear, efficient, human-first workflows.

TL;DR: Stop adding. Start simplifying.

Next time you look at a process and think, “You know what would make this better? Another step,” ask yourself:

Is this making the process better for the people using it? Or just more complicated?

Less is often more. And better.