Overview
A workflow playbook for agencies managing stakeholder approval work with boards, notes, owners, review cadence, and measurable follow-through. The page maps the operating problem, recommended structure, Kanvly setup, and measurement loop for this long-tail workflow.
The stakeholder approval problem for agencies
Nobody struggles with stakeholder approval work in the abstract; they struggle at the seams, where one person's "done" becomes another's "to do." That is exactly where agencies feel it, because internal execution, client communication, approvals, account history, and recurring retainer work all need different visibility.
A task list cannot carry that weight on its own. The workflow has to show where each piece sits, hold the reasoning behind it, and surface the work that has quietly gone cold.
Recommended workflow stages
A practical first version uses these stages: Preparing, Under review, Changes needed, Approved, Released. The exact names can change, but each stage should represent a decision or state that the team can recognize quickly.
Avoid creating a stage for every exception. If a state appears only once, it may belong in a card note instead of the permanent workflow.
- Preparing: make the entry and exit rule explicit.
- Under review: make the entry and exit rule explicit.
- Changes needed: make the entry and exit rule explicit.
- Approved: make the entry and exit rule explicit.
- Released: make the entry and exit rule explicit.
What context belongs beside the work
Approval work should preserve reviewer expectations, requested changes, final signoff, and the note that explains what was approved and why.
The team needs a private delivery layer that can produce clean client updates without exposing every internal note or blocker. Split the context away from the cards and the board degrades into a status display — accurate-looking, but no longer the place anyone goes to actually understand the work.
What this looks like in practice for agencies
Take a realistic snapshot: about 30 stakeholder approval workflow items in flight, spread over Preparing, Under review, Changes needed, Approved, Released. Scale is not what hurts the agencies group — overloading "Preparing" with work that means different things to different people is.
Run it on a 13-day cycle and the first thing to settle is what "Released" actually requires before a card is allowed to land there. Because internal execution, client communication, approvals, account history, and recurring retainer work all need different visibility, that one definition removes more thrash than any extra field. A 33-minute review that touches blocked, waiting, and stale "Preparing" cards is usually enough to keep approval cycle time, waiting items, overdue deliverables, and status-prep effort moving in the right direction.
Kanvly setup pattern
Let the Kanvly board carry the motion between Preparing and Released, and let linked notes and pages carry the reasoning — briefs, decisions, playbooks, handoff detail. The rule of thumb: a card you can read in seconds, backed by context you can rely on.
The payoff for agencies is one place to operate from instead of a rollout to manage. Begin with a single live workflow, watch what repeats, and template only that.
Measure the workflow, not only the output
For agencies, the measurement loop should watch approval cycle time, waiting items, overdue deliverables, and status-prep effort.
Health shows up as quieter coordination: fewer "what's the status?" pings, fewer ownerless cards, and decisions that are still findable once a card has moved past Released.
- Lock the stage definitions first; decorate the cards second.
- Give every active card an owner, next action, and due date where appropriate.
- Link decisions and briefs to the work they affect.
- Run a short, predictable pass over blocked, waiting, and aging "Preparing" cards.
- Capture learning before archiving completed work.