BPM OS – use case walkthrough
Building a BPM
Learning Program
From scratch.
Five apps. One end-to-end workflow. From the first idea to a running course with live participant feedback — here’s exactly how the BPM OS fits together for training and capability development.
Groundwork
Atlas
Playbook
Outline
Course Flow
Each app does one thing well. Together they cover the full journey.
The situation
You need to build a BPM
Capability program. Where do
You start?
Most organizations have some version of this problem: people doing process work but no structured program behind it. No common language, no learning path, no way to onboard new team members consistently. Someone — usually you — has been asked to fix that.
The typical response is a spreadsheet of course ideas, a PowerPoint learning path that gets stale immediately, and a project tracker that nobody updates. You end up managing the program in your head, which works until it doesn’t.
The BPM OS gives you a different starting point. Not a monolithic system — five focused tools, each handling one phase of the work, connected by a shared design language and permalinks that let you trace any deliverable back to the idea that created it.
Here’s how it works in practice. *And yes, I wished I had this years ago.*
Capture ideas & plan the curriculum
Before anything else, you need to get every idea out of your head and into one place
— without worrying about structure yet.
Open Groundwork and start a new project with the Training Development template. Six categories are pre-loaded: Needs Analysis, Curriculum Design, Content Production, Delivery, Evaluation, and Org. Change.
In Brainstorm mode, type every course idea, learning objective, content requirement, and stakeholder need as it comes to you. Press Enter between each one. Don’t worry about categories or priorities yet — just get it all down.
Then drag cards into the category zones that make sense. Group related ideas into stacks. Draw a zone for each release wave — v1, v2, v3 — and drag cards into the wave where they belong.
Switch to Sort and formalize the plan. Add effort estimates and MoSCoW priorities to each zone. Set zone dependencies — “Needs Analysis must complete before Curriculum Design begins.” What started as a list of ideas is now a structured plan.
What you hand off to the next step
A prioritized, wave-organized plan of every course and initiative — with Playbook pages for each course group, and Groundwork permalinks ready to paste into Atlas nodes and CourseFlow tasks.
Visualize the learning paths
Turn the prioritized plan into a visual learning journey — a subway map that shows every learner
exactly where they are and what comes next.
Open Atlas and create a new project. Each category from Groundwork becomes a path — Foundations, Modelling, Governance, Advanced Topics. Each course or milestone becomes a node.
Add transfer nodes where tracks connect — for example, after completing the Foundations track, learners can transfer to either the Modelling or Governance track. This is the visual language of prerequisites without the bureaucracy of a formal LMS prerequisite system.
Use node statuses deliberately: Active for courses that exist today, Planning (dashed) for courses in v2 or v3 with their target activation date, Decommissioned for anything being retired. The map shows the full picture — what learners can take now, what’s coming, and what’s been replaced.
Add the Playbook page URL for each course to the node’s link field. Now the Atlas node is the entry point to everything a learner or stakeholder needs to know about that course.
What you hand off to the next step
A shareable visual curriculum map that stakeholders can read in 30 seconds — and that learners can actually navigate. The map is the shared reference for everything that follows.
Structure each course
For each course on the Atlas map, build a detailed content structure before
writing a single slide or recording a single video.
Open Outline and create a project for each course — or one project per module cluster. Use the Training Outline template and the structure is already there: root node (course name), L2 sections (Introduction, Lessons 1–4, Closing), and placeholder content nodes.
Rename the sections to match your actual module names. Add L3 nodes for each lesson topic and mark the learning objectives with the Objective toggle — they’ll render with the bullseye icon and sort to the top within their section.
As ideas come up that don’t have a clear home yet, add them to the staging area (they appear as floating nodes with a dashed border above the tree). Assign them to the right section when you’re ready — nothing gets lost.
Export the tree as an image and drop it into a Playbook page or share it with the SME for review. The visual structure is clearer to review than a bulleted Word document — and you’ll catch structural problems before content production begins.
What you hand off to the next step
A reviewed, signed-off course structure for each module — clear enough that any instructional designer on the team can pick it up and start writing content without another briefing.
Manage the development project
The structure is approved. Now you need to build the actual course — and track every task
from script to LMS publish without losing anything.
Open Course Flow and create a project for each course — or one project per version (v1, v2, v3) if you’re building iteratively. Use the Course Creation template and 10 pre-built tasks appear immediately: define objectives, outline structure, develop scripts, build assessments, record media, review and QA, pilot, publish.
Each card has a priority strip (High/Medium/Low), a category label, and a full markdown notes field. Paste the Playbook page URL and the Outline project URL into the card notes so everyone on the team can find the reference material without asking.
As the course moves through stages, drag cards from Backlog → To Do → In Progress → Review → Done. The kanban board gives the whole team a live view of where everything stands without a status meeting.
When the course runs, share the participant feedback URL. Responses land directly in Course Flow’s feedback inbox. Triage them into new task cards — “update the quiz questions based on pilot feedback” — so the next iteration starts with a clear list of what to fix.
What you hand off to the next step
A published course, a feedback inbox full of real participant responses, and a v2 task list already forming — all in one place, with full traceability back to the original plan in Groundwork and the map in Atlas.
Document everything else
The program needs more than courses. Stakeholder management, communications,
governance decisions, facilitator guides, SME agreements — all of it needs a home.
Playbook is the knowledge base that holds everything that doesn’t fit in the other tools. Each course has its own Playbook page describing what it is, who it’s for, what the learning outcomes are, and where the reference materials live. That’s the page you link to from Atlas nodes and Course Flow cards.
Beyond individual courses, Playbook holds the program documentation: the stakeholder map, the communications plan, the governance decisions and their rationale, facilitator guides, SME contact lists, and the standards that govern how courses are built in your organization.
Use the How-To template for recurring processes — how to run a needs analysis, how to conduct an SME interview, how to prepare a pilot session. Write it once, link to it from Course Flow task cards, and anyone on the team can run the process without asking you.
The wiki links feature is particularly useful here: link from the Governance page to the specific process standard it references, from the Communications plan to the stakeholder map, from the facilitator guide to the course structure in Outline. Playbook becomes a connected knowledge graph, not a flat folder.
What the full BPM OS gives you
A complete, traceable learning program — from the first idea in Groundwork, through the visual path in Atlas, the course structure in Outline, the development project in Course Flow, and the institutional memory in Playbook. Every piece connects back to every other piece.
The complete picture
Five Apps. One End-to-End
Learning Program.
Each app hands off cleanly to the next. Every deliverable is traceable back to the idea
that created it. Nothing lives in someone’s head.
Step 1
Groundwork
Brainstorm ideas, sort into categories, classify by release and priority
Step 2
Atlas
Map the learning paths as a visual subway map with statuses and transfers
Step 3
Outline
Structure each course as a visual tree before writing a word of content
Step 4
Course Flow
Manage development projects with built-in feedback collection and triage
Step 5
Playbook
Document course details, program decisions, and how-to guides for the team
OTHER BPM IS WORKFLOWS
The learning workflow
Is one of several.
The same apps, recombined differently, cover other common BPM program workflows. Here are three that emerge naturally from the same toolkit.
Process Improvement
Running an improvement program
Brainstorm improvement ideas from discovery workshops. Sort by process area, classify by business value and effort.
Map the improvement roadmap — which initiatives run in parallel, which depend on others completing first.
Document as-is and to-be findings, decisions, standards, and SME interview notes for each process.
System Implementation
Implementing a BPM Platform
Capture requirements using the System Roll-out template. Sort into readiness, technical, enablement, and go-live zones.
Show the implementation sequence as a map — phases, dependencies, and go-live milestones that stakeholders can read at a glance.
Document the technical setup, configuration decisions, and training plan for the rollout team.
Consulting Engagement
Running a client engagement
Structure discovery output — sort findings by theme, classify by impact and effort, define the client’s improvement roadmap.
Build the program map as a client deliverable — branded with their colors, showing the full journey ahead.
Hand over a working knowledge base at engagement end — everything the client needs to continue without you.
Ready to build your program?
The BPM OS FOR LEarning.
Everything your program needs.
Five local-first apps that work together. One-time purchase. Start with the free Cadence planner for your own week, then add the tools your program actually needs — one at a time or all at once.
Part of the BPM OS from What’s Your Baseline?