Failure Containment and the Cost of Coordination

If one of five workers fails, what should happen to the other four?

Many designs give no answer, so the behavior depends on whatever the code happens to do. The lead may wait for a stuck worker until the run's budget ends. It may accept an invalid result as a finding, or start the whole run again and repeat the work of the four workers that succeeded.

Five Workers on One Dispute

Desk's lead has started five workers on a large invoice dispute. Each reads a different group of records and returns a typed result