The Delay step represents a waiting period in the workflow. It is the gap between one step finishing and the next step being able to begin. Delays are one of the most revealing parts of any workflow because they make visible the time a process spends not moving.
WHEN TO USE IT
Use Delay for:
- Waiting for a designer to return completed work
- A required cooling-off period before the next action
- Waiting for payment to clear
- A 48-hour review window before sending
- Any point where work is sitting idle before the next step can begin
FIELDS
Title
Name the wait clearly. "Wait for Design to be Returned", "Allow 48 Hours for Client Review", "Wait for Payment Clearance".
Summary
A description of why the wait exists and what is happening (or not happening) during it.
Duration
How long the delay typically lasts. Enter in hours, days, or weeks. The time cost is calculated automatically from this value.
Opportunity Cost
The financial cost of the wait. This might be the cost of a person being blocked from other work, the cost of a cash flow gap, or the cost of a deal sitting unmoved. Set to 0 if the delay does not block revenue or other meaningful work.
Reason for Delay
Why does this wait exist? This is a valuable field because simply articulating the reason often makes clients realise the delay is avoidable. "We wait because the founder is the only person who can approve it" is a very different situation from "we wait because the legal team needs five days by contract."
Blocks Other Work
Tick this if work genuinely cannot proceed while the delay is in progress. This flags the delay clearly in FixFlow analysis as a blocking bottleneck rather than a passive pause.
Notes and Reference Link
Any additional context.
HOW COST IS CALCULATED
The time cost of a Delay step is calculated from the duration you set. The opportunity cost is a separate field where you manually enter the financial impact of the wait. Both figures are used in FixFlow reports.
WHY DELAYS MATTER
In most business workflows, work spends far more time waiting than it does being actively worked on. A process that takes a person two hours of actual effort might take two weeks to complete because of delays between steps. Mapping these delays makes this visible for the first time.
During a discovery session, ask: "How long does work typically sit between this step and the next one?" Clients often say things like "oh it just goes to the next step" but when pressed, the answer is frequently "a day or two" or "until someone notices it." That gap is a Delay step, and it often has a significant cost attached to it.
HIDDEN DELAYS
Sometimes a delay is embedded inside what a client describes as a single step. They might say "we send the contract and then the client signs it." What they actually mean is: we send the contract, then we wait, then the client signs. The wait is a Delay step. Probe for these gaps whenever a step description includes the word "then" with a time gap implied.