Not every deal runs in a straight line

Every CRM starts you off with a straight line. Lead, then qualified, then proposal, then won. It looks clean in the demo. Then you try to run your actual business through it.

Real work forks. A proposal goes out and it either gets approved or it comes back for a revision, and those two outcomes lead to completely different next steps. A permit either clears or the city kicks it back. A design either passes review or it goes another round. Force all of that down one lane and you end up with a pipeline that quietly lies to you, full of deals parked in a stage that does not really describe where they are.

So we let pipelines branch.

In Coeffection, a stage can lead to more than one place. Draw a second path out of a stage and you get to name the branch, so Proposal can split into an approved path on one side and a revision path on the other, each with its own stages after it. The board finally matches the way the work actually moves, and a glance tells you the truth instead of a rough approximation.

A pipeline is a map. A map that only shows one road is not much of a map. This one shows the forks.