Controlled Flow

Intro

In BPMN, a controlled flow moves between flow objects via sequence flow but is subject to conditions or gateway dependencies. It matters because conditional routing ensures predictable process behavior.

Key points:

• Uses gateways to manage branching and merging.
• Expresses conditions on sequence flows.
• Common use cases: approvals (BPM), feature flags (Apps), data validation paths, failover routing (Tech).
• Pitfall: ambiguous conditions leading to deadlocks or loops.

Examples:

• Routing loan applications by risk score thresholds.
• Directing orders to manual review when data is incomplete.
• Merging parallel tasks after all prerequisites finish.

In practice:

Define clear, mutually exclusive conditions and test gateways for edge cases.

Related terms: gateway; sequence-flow; condition

FAQs:

Q: How do I show a condition on a sequence flow?
A: Use a conditional indicator and document the expression.

Q: What gateway types control flows?
A: Exclusive, inclusive, parallel, and complex gateways.

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