workflowcentric

Workflowcentric is an approach that prioritizes workflows—the sequences of tasks, data transfers, and rules that move a work item from initiation to completion—within the design and evaluation of systems. In practice, workflowcentric is used in business process management, software architecture, and systems engineering to model and automate processes rather than focusing primarily on data structures or user interfaces.

Key elements include process models for describing task sequences, workflow engines or orchestrators to execute steps, and artifacts that flow between stages. Workflows define task dependencies, parallelism, error handling, and auditing.

The approach offers benefits such as improved traceability, repeatability, scalability, and automation, as well as better alignment with governance and regulatory requirements. It supports clearer process ownership and more reliable execution across distributed environments.

However, workflowcentric design can introduce rigidity, modeling overhead, and maintenance challenges as processes evolve, requiring disciplined governance and versioning. It may also trade off flexibility for predictability, making rapid changes more complex in highly regulated or dynamic domains.

It is related to business process management, workflow management systems, and concepts such as orchestration versus choreography, and is often contrasted with data-centric or user-centric design.