I hear again and again developers’ complains on business users changing software requirements. (Especially so for business processes.) If asked “why do they?” such developer readily answers “because they don’t know what they want”. (This is a soft version of the answer indeed.)

May be so sometimes. But it’s worth to realize that business is under pressure much higher than developers are. We may require at least some degree of logic from our users but they have to deal with volatile customers, mean competitors, heartless state machine and market which is blind and deaf to our problems and arguments whatever logical they are.

So let’s be more patient to users that don’t always behave like we want them to.

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Sorry, this entry is only available in Русский.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Русский.

This anitpattern is almost trivial. Yet watching how different people make the same mistake at different projects I come to conclusion that it’s quite popular

Example 1: Concluding a contract. The draft must must be signed on behalf of our company by CEO:

Please respect the boss by giving him the opportunity not to sign the contract - put the gateway immediately after “sign by the CEO” activity.

Example 2: while processing a customer’s order, an agent company places an order with a partner:

Recognize that the partner has a free will and take into account the the possibility that he will not accept our order - add the gateway to the process.

One-way modeling is OK at early stages of process discovery, it’s the so-called “happy path”. On the other hand, is there any activity with the predetermined outcome? Maybe it’s better to check the result after each and every activity?

Putting gateways everywhere will clutter the scheme. The lesson learned from this antipattern is this: as a minimum, put the checks after activities where the free will is clearly visible - for example, assigned to decision makers or organizations independent of our.