We’re evaluating whether to start with pre-built templates instead of building workflows from scratch. The templates promise faster deployment and built-in best practices, which sounds good, but I’m skeptical about how much customization actually happens and whether the time savings are real.
In our case, we need a customer data enrichment workflow. There’s probably a template for that somewhere. But our data structure is kind of specific to our system, and we have integrations with some proprietary tools that a generic template wouldn’t know about.
So the question becomes: how much time do we actually save by starting with a template instead of building from scratch, once we factor in the customization work? If we’re going to end up rewriting 60% of it anyway, are we really ahead, or did we just waste time learning a template that we’re not gonna use anyway?
I’m also curious about whether templates are maintained and updated. If a template was built six months ago but the underlying API changed, is it still functional, or does it become a liability?
Has anyone actually used templates for a real-world workflow that didn’t match the template exactly? What was the time investment compared to building from scratch, and would you do it again?