Your process has five approvals. Pull two years of records and count how many were ever declined.
Approvals accumulate in processes and are never removed. Digitising them makes them permanent.
That last part is worth pausing on. A step that was a habit becomes a rule the moment it is configured. Removing it afterwards costs a change request, a release slot and a queue, which means most of them are never removed at all.
The test is whether it changes anything, not whether it is reasonable. How many times in the last two years has this approver declined? What happened when they did?
An approval that has never been withheld is not a control. It is a delay with a signature attached. It is usually defended on the grounds that it establishes accountability, which it does not — accountability is about who answers for an outcome, not about who clicked.
The data is sitting in your current workflow system. The analysis takes an afternoon, and it is best done before the new system encodes the chain faithfully.
From Built to Be Used, chapter 13.
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This article accompanies the book Built to Be Used.