Award Sounds

I mentioned before about a process having a single output. In other words, in a sequential process where one process step is performed after another, then there will usually only one output at a time.

If there are two outputs, it's often a good sign that it should be a decision point or a gateway instead of a process step.

If there really is no decision point and there are still several outputs, it implies that the following steps are performed in parallel.

People do one thing at a time

That's rare, if not impossible, when the tasks are being performed by a single person. There has to be an element of sequencing since a person at work can only do one task at a time. It's blurred by the occasions when a person will have several tasks on the go and do parts of each of them, none fully completed until the end. Yes, we may relax the rules and document that at a high level as parallel, but in fact it's still sequential. It's down to the person who's doing the tasks to manage which comes first. Bear in mind that we're talking about a person performing activities, not just watching tv and chatting at the same time.

Additional Benefits

It's always worth checking if the tasks are truly being processed in parallel. By being stricter with the documentation, and forcing a sequential view, you can sometimes uncover priorities that were previously unknown. You are also more likely to uncover inter-dependencies between the process steps.

Several Outputs?

It's a good guideline that there's only one output, but not always true. In the case of several roles, a process step could have an output into the following process step for the same role as well as a process step in another role. This would be by two different people and so can happen. It's still worth digging into the detail to check how that communication occurs, sometimes it's implied. At least figure out if it's a poll or subscribe method (we'll get to that later).

Back to swimlanes, now that we are more aware of the differences between parallel processing and sequential processing, we can use swimlanes to further the analysis.