Step 4: Document the "Happy Path"

The concept of documenting the "happy path" is that we document a sequential list of steps that describes how the participants interact with the workflow. The steps can be shown within the various swim lanes of the flowchart. At the very least, the set of steps should show a typical workflow with the normal processing. This normal processing is sometimes called the normal course, the normal flow, or the happy path. However, since things are not always happy, in Step 5 we cover the how to document the alternative paths of the workflow.