9 min read
Welcome to WorkflowFest: a light-hearted look at the ITSM and work management challenges that headline organisations every day.
Three Days. Ten Sponsors. One Mission: Stop the Chaos.
The organisers at BDQ are delighted to announce WorkflowFest 2026, the UK's premier open-air festival celebrating better ITSM, smarter work management, and the eternal struggle against organisational chaos.
Taking place over three unforgettable days, WorkflowFest brings together an incredible line-up of headline acts, emerging talent, and some very special guests who have been causing trouble in organisations for years.
Supported by our fantastic festival sponsors - HaloITSM, Freshworks, Atomicwork, Atlassian, Asana, Monday.com, Zephyr, GLPI, Help Desk Migration, and Lansweeper - we're expecting record attendance from project managers, service desk teams, operations leaders, IT professionals, and anyone who's ever uttered the phrase:
"Where did that request go?"
Day One:
🔥 Ticket Backlog
The undisputed king of support centre frustration returns with their biggest show yet.
Expect thousands of unresolved requests, endless queues, duplicate tickets, and a spectacular closing number titled "I've Been Waiting Three Weeks".
📋 Project Visibility Crisis
One of the most requested acts in modern business.
- Nobody knows where the project is.
- Nobody knows who owns the task.
- Nobody knows what "green" means on the status report.
- Yet somehow the project is still due next Friday.
☁️ Legacy Migration Anxiety
A festival veteran.
Known for powerful performances featuring:
- Unknown Dependencies
- Last-Minute Surprises
- Legacy Customisations
- "We've Always Done It This Way"
Also Performing
🔹Lost Email Requests 🔸 Approval Bottlenecks 🔹 Manual Escalations 🔸 Spreadsheet Service Desks 🔹 Unclear SLAs 🔸 Shadow IT Support Teams 🔹
Festival Tip
Teams that invest in clear workflows, shared visibility, planning discipline, and collaboration tools often report significantly fewer sightings of these performers.
Some have even retired them entirely.
Day Two:
🚨 Incident Overload
Known for surprise appearances and dramatic entrances at 4:57pm on Fridays.
Their set includes classics such as:
- "Everything Is Critical"
- "Nobody Logged It"
- "Restart It Again"
🔄 Priority Shuffle
Playing an entirely improvised set.
Songs include:
- "Everything Is Top Priority"
- "Can You Just Do This Quickly?"
- "We Changed Direction Again"
🔍 Asset Discovery Mystery
Playlist includes:
- Nobody knows how many devices exist.
- Nobody knows who owns them.
- Nobody knows what they're connected to.
- And somehow everything is business critical.
Also Performing
🔹 Duplicate Work 🔸 Meeting About The Meeting 🔹 Missing Dependencies 🔸 Resource Overload 🔹 Capacity Guesswork 🔸 Version Control Confusion 🔹 Forgotten Action Items 🔸
Festival Tip
Many attendees discover that structured service management, knowledge sharing, automation, and clear processes can dramatically reduce the number of appearances made by these artists.
Coincidence? We think not.
Day Three:
📈 Reporting Blindspot
Bringing a visually confusing performance involving twelve spreadsheets, four conflicting dashboards, and a KPI nobody understands.
🧩 Collaboration Breakdown
Famous for bringing together multiple departments that somehow still don't communicate.
- A fan favourite amongst organisations relying on lengthy email chains and disconnected tools.
🧪 Testing Bottleneck
Returning with a spectacular production involving spreadsheets, screenshots, missed defects, and twenty-seven different versions of the same test script.
Also Performing
🔹 Manual Data Migration 🔸 Knowledge Silos 🔹 User Adoption Resistance 🔸 Compliance Panic 🔹 Configuration Sprawl 🔸 Documentation Drift 🔹 Audit Trail Nightmares 🔸
Festival Tip
A solid plan, the right partners, and a little automation can make transformation projects far less dramatic.
Let's keep Legacy Migration Anxiety in the support act slot where it belongs.
🎪 Meet Our Festival Sponsors
WorkflowFest wouldn't be possible without the support of our sponsors:
|
HaloITSM Keeping the service management stage running smoothly. |
Freshworks Helping teams deliver better service experiences. |
Atomicwork Bringing modern employee support to the festival grounds. |
Atlassian Collaboration, service management, knowledge sharing. |
Asana Helping teams stay aligned and focused on outcomes. |
|
Monday.com Making work visible across departments. |
Zephyr Ensuring testing and quality assurance get the spotlight they deserve. |
GLPI Supporting organisations with flexible open-source ITSM. |
Help Desk Migration Helping attendees move between venues without losing their luggage. |
Lansweeper Making sure nobody forgets what's actually in their environment. |
The Good News
Unlike most festivals, WorkflowFest exists to help these performers leave the stage!
Across industries, organisations continue to find better ways to manage services, coordinate work, improve visibility, automate repetitive tasks, and give teams the tools they need to succeed.
Sometimes all it takes is the right process.
Sometimes it takes the right platform.
Sometimes it takes both.
Either way, life becomes much easier when Ticket Backlog isn't headlining every Friday afternoon.
See You Next Year?
Hopefully not…
Because if you've successfully tackled your biggest ITSM and work management challenges, you'll be too busy enjoying smoother operations, happier teams, and fewer emergency escalations to need another ticket.
Disclaimer
Obviously, WorkflowFest is entirely fictional, inspired by HaloITSM’s Halo Festival. Any resemblance between the performers listed above and the challenges currently occurring within your organisation is probably not a coincidence!
This article is intended as a light-hearted look at common IT Service Management and work management challenges faced by organisations of all sizes. The sponsor names referenced are BDQ technology partners whose solutions are often used to help organisations improve visibility, collaboration, service delivery, reporting, testing, asset management, and operational efficiency.
No artists were harmed during the writing of this festival announcement. However, hopefully some spreadsheets may have been retired!
Ready to Retire Some Headliners?
If Ticket Backlog is still selling out every week, Incident Overload keeps making surprise appearances, or Project Visibility Crisis is topping the charts in your organisation, it might be time to bring in some experienced event organisers!
At BDQ, we help organisations improve ITSM, work management, collaboration, reporting, testing, asset management, and digital transformation. Whether you're implementing a new platform, migrating from an existing solution, improving processes, or simply trying to make work flow more smoothly, we're here to help.
We've worked with organisations of all sizes to tackle many of the challenges featured in this year's WorkflowFest line-up, helping teams gain visibility, reduce manual effort, improve collaboration, and create scalable foundations for future growth.
So, if you're ready to get some of these performers off your stage for good, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch with BDQ and let's talk about what you need.
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