Parallel Approval Workflows

Parallel approval trades certainty for speed and introduces a question sequential design avoids: what constitutes completion. Unanimous approval is slow and gives any single approver a veto; majority is faster and may proceed without the person whose objection mattered most. The design also has to handle conflicting responses, which sequential routing never encounters because each approver sees the previous decision. Getting this wrong produces documents that are technically approved and substantively contested.

Centralpoint records each approver's response individually against the version they saw, so a parallel approval resolves to a set of identified decisions rather than a single aggregate state. Where approvals conflict, the record shows who dissented and on what version — which is the material an escalation or a later dispute actually needs.