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In the world of Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), clarity and simplicity are key. A BPMN diagram is supposed to communicate how a process works so that stakeholders can easily understand and systems can execute it. However, as organizations scale up their workflow designs, processes can quietly bloat into over-engineered beasts. Process modeling “smells” – borrowed from the idea of code smells – are warning signs that a workflow has become dangerously or inefficiently complex. Even experienced designers can fall into these traps. As the architect of ProcessMaker 4 cautioned, the platform’s flexibility can become a source of confusion without proper structure ajbapps.com. In this post, we highlight five red flags that your BPMN process is too complex, explain why each is problematic, and offer expert guidance on how to simplify. We’ll start with general BPMN best practices and then see how these complexity issues often manifest in ProcessMaker 4 workflows.
Sign 1: Tangled Sequence Flows (The “Spaghetti” Effect)
A tangled BPMN diagram can resemble a plate of spaghetti – a jumbled network of paths that’s hard to follow.
One of the clearest signs of excessive complexity is a diagram with too many crossing lines and arrows. If your process map looks like a bowl of spaghetti – with sequence flows zigzagging in every direction – it’s a red flag that the model lacks clarity linkedin.com linkedin.com. This often happens when the process has grown organically without proper planning, resulting in a chaotic tangle of connections linkedin.com. Such a model is hard to read and even harder to maintain, as stakeholders struggle to trace the main path amid the tangle. In ProcessMaker 4’s workflow designer, an overly complex process might span an unwieldy canvas with lines jumping between tasks in different pools or lanes, indicating an attempt to force too much into one view.
Why it’s dangerous: Tangled flows create confusion and invite errors. Important steps can be missed in the clutter, and the diagram no longer serves its purpose as a communication tool. Just as “spaghetti code” in software is difficult to debug, a spaghetti BPMN process is difficult to analyze or modify. It signals that the process logic isn’t cleanly organized.
How to resolve it: Simplify and straighten the flow of your process. Aim for a linear or top-down layout where possible, and avoid crossing lines by reordering elements or using explicit routing elements. For example, use intermediate events or merging gateways to combine paths cleanly instead of drawing itsy-bitsy lines from every task to every other task. Ensure each sequence flow has a clear purpose. If certain steps are causing a lot of back-and-forth lines, consider moving those steps into a subprocess (more on that below) or using message events to communicate between separate processes. The goal is to make the process diagram as easy to follow as a simple roadmap, not a maze.
Real-world analogy: A tangled process diagram is like a city with streets crisscrossing haphazardly. Drivers (or in our case, process participants) get lost or delayed because the routes are not clear. The solution is like urban planning for your workflow – create clear main roads and intersections (major flows and decision points) and eliminate the unnecessary back alleys. By untangling the “spaghetti,” you’ll have a diagram that readers can trace from start to finish without getting lost linkedin.com.
Sign 2: Gateway Overload (Decision Diamonds Everywhere)
In BPMN, gateways (the diamond-shaped symbols) represent decision points or splits and joins in the flow. While gateways are essential for routing, overusing them is a classic complexity smell. If your process has gateways sprinkled liberally on every path – perhaps even nested inside other gateways – it suggests the model is trying to encode very complex business rules with brute-force logic. An excessive use of parallel, exclusive, or inclusive gateways without clear structure is often observed in spaghetti processes linkedin.com. In ProcessMaker 4, this might appear as a cluster of decision diamonds dominating your workflow map, making it look more like a complex decision tree than a straightforward process.
Why it’s dangerous: Gateway overload leads to a combinatorial explosion of paths. The more decision points you cram into a single process, the harder it becomes to verify that each path works correctly. Important scenarios might be overlooked among dozens of branch combinations. It also indicates the process is trying to handle too many rules or variations all at once, which can confuse both the people who need to understand the process and the system that executes it cprime.com. As one BPM expert notes, unnecessarily complicated models often result from trying to capture complex decisions using only BPMN constructs cprime.com. This not only makes the diagram complex, but it can also lead to maintenance headaches when business rules change.
How to resolve it: Rather than weaving an intricate web of gateways, consider externalizing complex logic. Simplify the decision structure by asking if every distinction is needed in this diagram or if some rules can be handled elsewhere. For example, ProcessMaker 4 provides Decision Tables (DMN) for modeling complex business rules outside the process flow docs.processmaker.com. You can evaluate multiple conditions in a decision table and output a result that the BPMN diagram uses to choose a path, instead of drawing gateways for every rule. Another approach is to break the process: if one section of the workflow contains a lot of conditional logic, isolate it in a subprocess or a separate process that returns an outcome to the main flow. Always use the simplest gateway type that meets your needs – e.g., don’t chain exclusive gateways when a single inclusive gateway or a decision service would do. The guiding principle is clarity: a reader of the diagram should be able to see the major decision points at a glance, not be confronted with a labyrinth of diamonds.
Real-world analogy: Think of a process with gateway overload like a road with too many forks and intersections. If every few hundred feet there’s a junction splitting into multiple directions, travelers will be constantly stopping to decide which way to go, and many will take wrong turns. The journey becomes slow and error-prone. The better approach is to have a few well-marked junctions (major decision points) and otherwise let travelers proceed straight on the main highway. In the same way, streamline your process logic: handle the complex decision-making in a controlled way (perhaps off the main “highway” of the BPMN diagram), and keep the primary flow of the process as straightforward as possible.
Sign 3: Monolithic Mega-Process (Lack of Subprocesses or Modularity)
Does your BPMN diagram attempt to encompass every single step from A to Z in one enormous model? If so, you may have a monolithic process design – a telltale smell of complexity. A process that sprawls with dozens of tasks, multiple pools, and myriad connectors without any subprocesses is likely too complex and too crowded. In ProcessMaker 4, for example, you have the ability to create reusable subprocesses (child processes) and even features like PM Blocks (mini process snippets) to encapsulate common actions. If you aren’t using these and instead have one diagram doing everything, that’s a red flag. In fact, one of the most common mistakes in ProcessMaker 4 is “designing monolithic workflows” and poor use of subprocesses ajbapps.com.
Why it’s dangerous: Monolithic processes are hard to understand and maintain. They often indicate that the modeler tried to capture an entire business function in one diagram, even if it involves multiple distinct phases or teams. This can lead to a huge process map (sometimes literally not fitting on a screen or page) where the core objective is obscured by secondary steps and exceptions. Large diagrams also tend to have more points of failure. Every time a requirement changes in one part of that massive process, you must carefully regression-test the whole thing. There is no separation of concerns – everything is interwoven. Moreover, you lose opportunities for reuse. If a certain sequence of steps (say a task approval loop or a data validation) is needed in another workflow, a monolithic design might tempt you to duplicate that logic in another big process, rather than reuse a modular subprocess. This increases maintenance effort across processes.
How to resolve it: Break it down. Just as complex software is refactored into modules or microservices, a complex BPMN process should be refactored into subprocesses and simpler parent workflows. The ProcessMaker documentation itself recommends breaking large processes into a master process with child processes to reduce map complexity and handle exceptions or ancillary activities wiki.processmaker.net. Look at your process and identify natural subprocess candidates: for example, a self-contained subset of activities that accomplishes a sub-goal, or a part of the process that a different team owns, or steps that could logically repeat or be reused. Each of those can likely be a subprocess (or a callable process). In ProcessMaker 4, implementing a subprocess is straightforward – you create a separate process and then call it from the main process. This not only simplifies the main diagram, but it also allows the subprocess to be maintained or reused independently.
When redesigning, ensure each subprocess has a clear focus and isn’t just as complex as the original! Sometimes it helps to define the “happy path” in the main process and spin off all the detailed handling into subprocesses. Avoid the temptation to model everything in one place. As a bonus, a modular approach means parts of your process can potentially run in parallel or be managed by different owners more easily.
Real-world analogy: A monolithic BPMN diagram is like a Swiss Army knife that tries to do it all – it has a hundred tools in one handle. Yes, it technically might do everything, but it’s unwieldy and inefficient. A better design is like a toolbox with a few well-chosen tools: each tool (subprocess) is specialized, and you use it when appropriate. Another analogy is writing a book: you wouldn’t cram the entire story into one giant chapter. Instead, you break it into chapters and sections so readers can follow the narrative. Similarly, break your mega-process into logical chunks. The result will be workflows that are easier to digest, test, and optimize. And in ProcessMaker, you’ll find your canvas much cleaner – no more endless scrolling through a tangle of tasks.
Sign 4: Too Many Exceptions and Special Cases (Unnecessary Complexity)
If your process model tries to account for every conceivable scenario, including rare exceptions and “just in case” branches, it may have tipped into unnecessary complexity. A healthy BPMN process should represent the typical flow of work (with some allowance for variations), but it doesn’t need to explicitly model every outlier. When we see a diagram full of edge-case handling – multiple alternate paths, event after event catching every tiny error, or gateways evaluating niche conditions – we’re looking at a process smell. This is often related to the gateway overload issue, but it’s more about scope creep in the process logic. The LinkedIn BPMN community describes this as including “too many details or exceptions in a single diagram, rather than simplifying or abstracting the process” linkedin.com. In ProcessMaker 4 workflows, this might appear as a proliferation of conditional flows and scripted tasks all meant to handle unlikely scenarios, making the main flow hard to follow.
Why it’s dangerous: Modeling every exception in-line bloats your process and obscures the primary path. The more branches and alternate flows you have, the more complex the testing and the greater the chance of errors (because rarely executed paths might not get enough attention). It also becomes difficult for business users to understand the model – the signal (core process) gets lost in the noise (all the special cases). Additionally, a process that is overly specific can be less flexible. If one tiny assumption changes, you might have to update multiple branches. In short, you get a diagram that tries to be exhaustive and ends up exhausting the team that uses it.
How to resolve it: Embrace the art of abstraction and separation. Focus your BPMN on the normal flow and a few key alternate flows. Handle truly rare cases outside of the main diagram when possible. BPMN offers mechanisms like event subprocesses or error events that can catch exceptions without cluttering every path with a gateway – use these for off-loading error handling. Also consider whether some decisions are better handled by business rules engines or scripts (as discussed earlier) so that the diagram doesn’t branch for every rule. It can help to follow a method: first model the “happy path” (the ideal scenario) clearly from start to finish researchgate.net. Then add a small number of controlled detours for likely variations. If you find yourself adding a third, fourth, fifth alternate flow, pause and ask if those could be collapsed into one handled by a rule, or moved into a subprocess, or even managed procedurally (e.g. an manual intervention) rather than automated. Remember, not every scenario needs to live in the BPMN. Sometimes it’s fine to handle an outlier manually if it keeps the automated process lean.
Expert tip: As processes mature, analyzing runtime data can help identify which paths are rarely used. Those might be candidates to simplify or remove from the diagram. In ProcessMaker 4, you might use process reports or ProcessMaker’s Process Intelligence features to see if certain branches ever execute. If not, they probably don’t belong in the primary model.
Real-world analogy: An overly exception-laden process is like a policy document that tries to enumerate every possible “what-if”. It becomes so long and convoluted that nobody can follow it – and ironically, edge cases still slip through. A better approach is to set the main policy clearly (the main process), and have a general guideline or expert on call for truly odd situations (an off-diagram handling). Or consider a car’s GPS: if it tried to display every alternate route for every possible detour on your map at once, you’d be o
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