I am an owner who does not know how to code or prompt, but I need to define the technical requirements for an internal workflow automation. How do I translate our daily operational friction into a clear technical scope a builder can actually execute?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Stop trying to learn programming syntax or technical terminology. Your job is not to design the software architecture. Your job is to define the exact operational boundaries, business rules, and expected outcomes of the process.

Use your EOS Process Component as the foundation. Take the cumbersome manual process you want to automate and document the 20/80 workflow using plain business language. Break the project scope into four concrete sections:

- Trigger: What exact event starts the workflow? Is it a customer submitting an intake form, an invoice arriving in an inbox, or a job marked complete in your CRM?
- Inputs: What specific files, databases, or fields are required to do the work? Gather ten real-world historical examples of these inputs, including clean examples and messy edge cases with missing data or strange formats.
- Transformation Rules: Write down the logical checks a human currently performs. If an order exceeds ten thousand dollars, flag it for manager sign-off. If the service address is outside our standard territory, add a delivery surcharge. State these rules explicitly.
- Output and Destination: What exact artifact must be created, and where does it live? Is it a drafted quote in your ERP, a scheduled calendar invite, or a task assigned on your project board?

Hand this document to your developer or internal builder and tell them you do not care what tools or models they use behind the scenes. Tell them your acceptance criteria is simple: feed the system your ten historical examples and verify that the system produces the exact expected outputs without human intervention.