Note on As Someone Who Spent Most of a Career in Process Automation, I've Decided Doing It Well Is Mostly About State Limitation. via ycombinator.com

Exceptions or edge cases add additional states.

To fight the explosion of state count (and the intermediate states those generate), you have a couple powerful tools:

1. Identifying and routing out divergent items (aka ensuring items get more similar as they progress through automation)
2. Reunifying divergent paths, instead of building branches

Well-designed automation should look like a funnel, rather than a subway map.

If you want to go back and automate a class of work that’s being routed out, write a new automation flow explicitly targeting it. Don’t try and kludge into into some giant spaghetti monolith that can handle everything.

PS: This also has the side effect of simplifying and concluding discussions about “What should we do in this circumstance?” with other stakeholders. Which for more complex multi-type cases can be never-ending.

FROM:

ycombinator.com

As Someone Who Spent Most of a Career in Process Automation, I've Decided Doing It Well Is Mostly About State Limitation.

Source

Still not sure if I’m 100% on board with this guidance, but I think I like it.