Executive Summary

🚫 Tailored workflows = chaos.
Every department wants its own flow: PM, Finance, IT, Support.
The result? Five languages in one system. Zero clarity.

✅ The winning formula: Stage Classes
New → WIP → On Hold → Waiting Approval → Done → Cancelled

Teams can still use labels like Testing, Vendor Feedback, Drafting — but each stage must roll up into one of the six classes.

👉 That way:

• Everyone speaks a common language.

• Reports stay clean.

• Departments keep comfort, but the org keeps discipline.

Flexibility lives in fields & tags.
Discipline lives in stage classes.

Unified wins. Tailored fails. Every single time.

Deep dive

In every ERP or project system rollout, the same clash happens:

• The Project Manager wants their own workflow to track deliverables.

• The Finance Manager insists on stages aligned to approvals and budget gates.

• The IT Manager demands a flow that reflects incidents and tickets.

Each request looks valid, but soon the organization is juggling multiple disconnected workflows. The result? Chaos.

The Trap of Tailored Workflows

Tailored workflows promise relevance for each department. But they:

• Fragment visibility — no single source of truth.

• Break reporting — dashboards don’t align because each stage means something different.

• Add cost — governance and training multiply.

What feels like flexibility ends up being dysfunction.

The Stage Classes Approach

The solution isn’t to kill all custom stages. It’s to force classification into six universal stage classes:

New → WIP → On Hold → Waiting Approval → Done → Cancelled

Managers can still create descriptive stages — like “Testing,” “Vendor Feedback,” or “Drafting” — but each must roll up into one of these six.

That way:

• Departments keep their comfort language.

• The organization keeps discipline.

• Reports stay clean and comparable.

Tailored Needs Belong Elsewhere

Scope-specific tracking (priority, SLA, budget impact, type of request, department) should live in custom fields and tags, not stages. Stages are for flow, fields are for context.

Why This Always Wins

1. Clarity: Everyone understands which class a task belongs to.

2. Flexibility: Teams can have extra labels, but only within the backbone.

3. Governance: One system of record across the enterprise.

4. Analytics: Dashboards are meaningful because stages collapse into the six.

5. Future-Proof: When managers change, stage classes remain constant.

The Winning Argument

Whenever “custom flows” come up, the principle is simple:

• Custom stage names? Allowed.

• Custom workflows? Not allowed.

• Everything must map to the six stage classes.

That balance — freedom in naming, discipline in classification — is what keeps organizations efficient, transparent, and scalable.

Unified stage classes win. Tailored workflows fail. Every single time.