The document discusses common pitfalls or "sins" of workflow implementation, including relying on zero-code suites, building a homegrown workflow engine, using no engine, the wrong engine, improper granularity, creating a monolithic BPM system, overengineering workflows, and violating microservice boundaries. It advocates using a state machine-based approach to address challenges like handling time/timeouts, retries, distributed transactions, and message correlation in a developer-friendly way that is composable for both BizDev and Ops teams.

1. The 7 sins of workflow
mail@bernd-ruecker.com

2. The 7 sins of workflow
3
2
4
6
5
7
1

3. What is workflow?

4. The obvious use case for workflow: Human task management

5. A simple example
Human task
management
Service
collaboration
Events , e.g.
timers
* Modeled in BPMN
= ISO Standard for modeling and execution

6. Tasklists and task forms
…

7. Another use case:
service collaboration

8. Service A
Challenge: Synchronous collaboration
Call
service B
Service B
The network is unreliable
Hystrix adds circuit
breaker & fail fast
Retry capability missing

9. Service A
Challenge: Asynchronous collaboration
Send
message
to B
Service B
Wait for
response
Timeout handling
Message correlation
State handling

10. Challenge: Flow logic
Sequence
Routing decisions
Parallelism
…
See also http://www.workflowpatterns.com/

11. Challenge: Distributed transactions
1. book
hotel
2. book
car
3. book
flight
6.
cancel
hotel
5.
cancel
car
4. In case of
failure trigger
compensations
book
trip
Service A
Car ServiceHotel Service Flight Service
ACID-Transactions
only local in the
service contexts
Distributed
transaction via Saga
pattern using
compensating
activities

12. A workflow engine is a (persistent) state machine

13. What BPMN can do

14. What BPMN can do

15. What BPMN can do

16. Toolbox for distributed systems
Handling of time &
timeouts
Retry
Distributed
transactions
Message correlation &
de-duplication

17. Workflow
and BPM

19. … and death by
properties panel
Same story with BPM:
Shiny vendors promised zero-code …
proprietary, alien
like tools …

20. BPM sucks.
I hate it.
So thank you,
I can do without.

21. Alarming by
management attention

24. Let‘s simply build
this ourselves…

25. It is en-vogue

26. This is not a new idea…
Own DSL, parsing, graphical representation,
modeler, persistence, escalation, version
management, tooling, …

28. The 7 sins of workflow
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
No engine Wrong engine
4
6
5
7

29. Process Manager
…

30. Bernd Rücker
Consultant & Evangelist
10+ years workflow
http://bernd-ruecker.com/
bernd.ruecker@camunda.com
Co-founder Camunda
http://camunda.org/

31. BPM done right
Developer friendly Composable BizDevOps

32. Live hacking

33. Live hacking wrap-up
@Autowired
ProcessEngine engine;
Bpmn.createProcess()
...;

34. The 7 sins of workflow
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
No engine Wrong engine
4
6
5
7

35. The 7 sins of workflow
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
Granularity
bloopers
Over engineering
No engine Wrong engine Wrong usage
6 7

36. The 7 sins of workflow
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
Granularity
bloopers
BPM monolith
Over engineering
No engine Wrong engine Wrong usage
7

37. Microservice Orchestration?

38. Avoid the BPM monolith in microservice architectures
Payment
Order
engine
engine
Inventory
Shipping Payment
Order Inventory
Shipping
BPM

39. Do not violate the microservice ownerships
Order
Inventory
Payment

40. Payment
Distributed flows are owned by microservices
Order
Distributed
orchestration

41. The 7 sins of workflow
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
Granularity
bloopers
BPM monolith Stakeholders
habitat violation
Over engineering
No engine Wrong engine Wrong usage

42. Avoid these sins and life will be great!

43. Summary: State machines solve some hard developer problems
Monitoring &
Operations
Handling of time &
timeouts
Retry
Visibility &
Reporting
Versioning
Compensation
Message correlation
Performance &
scalability

44. Thank you!

45. Slides:
https://bernd-ruecker.com
Blog:
https://blog.bernd-ruecker.com
Feedback:
https://bernd-ruecker.com/feedback