Why does workflow composition fail?

The most common reason workflow composition fails: Building monolithic workflows that try to do everything in one unbroken sequence. The monolith feels simpler because it is one thing rather than five, but it is fragile in ways that composed workflows are not. When a monolithic workflow fails at step seven, you must restart from step one — because the intermediate outputs were never defined, never saved, never made available as re-entry points. A composed workflow fails at one stage, and you restart only that stage, feeding it the preserved output of the previous one. Monoliths also resist improvement: changing any part risks breaking the whole. Composed workflows improve one module at a time.

The fix: Choose one complex process you perform regularly — something that takes more than an hour and involves multiple distinct phases. Decompose it into the smallest independent workflows you can identify. For each sub-workflow, write its input specification and its output specification. Then verify the chain: does the output of workflow A match the input specification of workflow B? Does the output of workflow B match the input specification of workflow C? Where there is a mismatch — where you have to mentally translate or manually reformat between stages — you have found a composition seam that needs repair. Fix the specifications so the chain flows without manual intervention at the boundaries.

The underlying principle is straightforward: Complex workflows are built by combining simpler workflows. The output of one becomes the input of another. Composition is the mechanism that turns a library of small, proven workflows into an infrastructure that handles arbitrarily complex work.