Stage-Based Workflows:Principles & Practices

Mike FitzmauriceChief Technology Officer - skybow

mikefitz@mikefitz.com@mikefitz

Who am I?

• Mike Fitzmaurice

• mikefitz@mikefitz.com or @mikefitz

• 11 years at Microsoft, 10 years at Nintex, now CTO of skybow

• The original SharePoint evangelist

• 25 years experience with workflow, business productivity, citizen development

Agenda

• This isn’t how to use any particular workflow tool

• This is how to think about workflow

• It should apply to most, if not all, tool options

• It’s based on repeated experiences and observations

Sequential workflows get messy – quickly

Example: Press Release

• Author

• Management

• Legal

• Publisher

You may think it looks like this…

StartPublisher deploys to

public web siteEnd

End End

Manager approves

Yes

No

Lawyer Approves

Yes

No

Or perhaps this…

Start

Publisher deploys to

public web siteEnd

End

Author Revises

Yes

No

ManagerApproves

Yes

No

Lawyer Approves

Yes

No

We can make it messier…

• Professional editorial review

• Lawyer with question for management

This will get ugly, unless we rethink it

How About This Instead?

Author Manager Legal Publisher

How About This Instead?

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author ManagerPublish

Publisher

End

Publish

Stage Workflow

Immediate Payoffs to State Workflows

• Designer determines what’s possible

• Participants determine what happens

• Every execution can take a different path – within reason

• Better reflects reality

State Machine

State Machine Concepts

States Events Transitions

Push Button Light Switch

OnOff

Press Button

Complete Circuit

Press Button

Break Circuit

State

Transition

Event

Keep in Mind:

• The machine stays in a given state by default

• An event must occur to change state

• The work takes place during the transitions

Easy User Participation

How easy is it to have the Lawyer review this?

Start

Publisher deploys to

public web siteEnd

End

Author Revises

Yes

No

ManagerApproves

Yes

No

Lawyer Approves

Yes

No

How easy is it to have the Lawyer review this?

Choice

Legal

Author ManagerPublish

How easy is it to have the Author review this?

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

Payoffs to Participation

• Users teach you what they know

• Each story is a stage

• You assemble the stages together

• No one needs to learn how to read a BPMN diagram

Easy to adjust

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author PublisherManager

Publisher

End

Publish

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author PublisherManager

Publisher

End

Publish(re)Submit?

Editor

Author ManagerEditor

Payoffs to Updatability

• Major changes with minimal disruption

• Stages are relatively independent

• Transition logic is all that needs to change

Easy to restore state

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author PublisherManager

Publisher

End

Publish

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author PublisherManager

Publisher

End

Publish

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author PublisherManager

Publisher

End

Publish

Record Stage

Record Stage

Record Stage

Record Stage

(re)Submit?

Author

End Manager

OK?

Manager

Author Legal

Choice

Legal

Author PublisherManager

Publisher

End

Publish

Record Stage

Record Stage

Record Stage

Record Stage

Last Known Stage

Legal

Author Publisher

Manager Legal

The alternative is unpleasant

Without using stages

• Ugly, hard-to-create, hard-to-read diagrams

• You have to think about every possible path in advance

• Users have no flexibility

Without explicit software support for stages…

• A lot of looping

• A lot of If-Then-Else conditions

• Very confusing diagrams…

Parallel

OK to exit?

Author?

Editor?

Manager?

Legal?

Publish?

… … … … …

Loop

What shouldn’t be stage-based?

Nothing.Everything can be stage-based.

Author

Manager

Review

Manager

Legal

Review

Legal

Publisher

Review

Publisher

End

Publish

This is a sequential workflow using stages

There’s still one thing missing…

Multiple Events/Transitions per Stage

Stage ≠ Role

Stages

Author Revisions

Editorial Review

Management Review

Legal Review

Publishing

Ro

les

Author• Edit• Resubmit

• Recall • Recall • Recall

Editor • Reassign• Approve• Reject

• Recall • Recall

Manager • Cancel • Cancel• Approve• Reject• Cancel

• Cancel • Cancel

Lawyer• Approve• Reject• Pose Question

Publisher • Publish

1. Notify Previous Reviewers2. Set Stage to “Author Revisions”3. Assign task to Author

1. Set Stage to “Manager Review”2. Assign task to Manager

Multi-Role/Multi-State Payoff

• Everyone can stay connected to the process

• Individual transition actions are short and simple

• Completely reflects reality

• (Weirdly) reduces the need for an elaborate workflow engine

Ramifications

• UX plays a much bigger role

• UX must adapt to stage

• Individual short-lived transition steps

• There’s no concept of automatic “waiting”

• Audit trails become very important

• Anything is possible

Call to Action

• Try to design using stages

• Consider tools and techniques that support stages

• Even sequential paths can be a set of stages

• Each with one event/transition

• Even if you can’t build with stages, model with them and communicate using them.

Thank you for attending!