Are there advantages of workflows sharing a task list?

Question

I have seen this approach as my company is currently upgrading from SP2007 to SP2010. Because the person who designed this left the company and there hasn't been anyone who continued maintaining the site/architecture, I'm wondering if this approach makes any sense.

Actually, the design is like this:

There is one Task List with like 10 Content Types (e.g. "Print Request", "Send Document"...) attached. Each Content Type has custom forms and all the forms are stored in the workflow itself. So the Content Types are referencing to forms inside the "Workflows list".

I wonder if this approach does have any advantage that I can't see?

Answer 1

If it's a single visual studio workflow, then that's how workflows work.

When you create a workflow you don't know the name of either the task or history list (visual studio makes you think you know it, but that's only for debugging) when you associate the workflow with a list you specify the task/history lists either as new or existing lists. But all of the tasks in the workflow use the same list.

If it's multiple workflows then the advantage could be that it's easier to get an overview of all outstanding workflow tasks than if they're spread out into multiple lists.