-  Workflows decompose goals into actionable tasks with clear outputs and constraints, enabling a consistent work structure that leaves less margin for error.
- In contrast, role-based teams would make inconsistent work plans, leading to workers working in non-optimal order and missing essential steps that would otherwise be built into the workflow.


Workflows Encode the Best Practices

- Workflows support a more sequential interdependence style, where work can be passed on step-by-step without the need for synchronous coordination. 
- Because this lessens the need for concurrent work and mutual adjustment between coworkers, workflow-based groups logged in less active work hours as a whole, making them more efficient and affordable. 


Workflows Influence Interdependence Styles

- Workflows reduce the need for communication and coordination between individual workers by establishing a structure for all of them to work in. As such, many coordination challenges could be avoided by setting up this pre-specified structure.
- Without workflows, role-based teams can still navigate coordination challenges by setting up a specific work plan early on in the project so that all workers have a clear idea of their role within the team and can orient their actions accordingly.
- However, without an initial plan and prior communication, role-based teams can fall apart due to confusion and frustration over individual decisions, with workers downstream suffering the consequences of the poorly thought-out decisions of those upstream.


Workflows Minimize Coordination Challenges

Workflows support coordination in three main ways:
- Encoding the best practices
- Influencing interdependence styles
- Minimizing coordination challenges


New York University

- Complex tasks require situated action: constant reflection, revision, and adaptation toward one’s goals. The more complex the task, the more necessary adaptation becomes.
- Workflows streamline the work process, reducing the margin of error. 
- However, workflows are static, limiting situated action. As such, complex tasks have traditionally been difficult to achieve using workflows.  

Tradeoffs of Using Workflows to Complete Complex Tasks

Retelny, D., Bernstein, M. S., & Valentine, M. A. (2017). No workflow can ever be enough: How crowdsourcing workflows constrain complex work. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 1(CSCW), 1-23.

No Workflow Can Ever Be Enough: How Crowdsourcing Workflows Constrain Complex Work

- Workflows are limited tools in unpredictable situations with evolving goals that require open-ended adaptation, making them problematic for complex work
- However, as the results show, the structure that workflows enforce are still important. Future designs must find a balance between structure and flexibility.
- The researchers suggest a few possible ways to improve future designs for crowdsourcing platforms that would incorporate their findings, as well as ways to improve existing platforms.


Implications for Future Design (How Crowdsourcing Workflows Constrain Complex Work)

The strict pre-arranged structure of workflows inhibit the crowd’s ability to:
- Respond to contingencies
- Consider and implement alternative solutions

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