I'm trying to create a visual representation of the state of a workflow process that is linear but has parallel branches in it, for example:

```
A ----> B ----> C1 ----> D ----> E
          \---> C2 --------------^

```

The idea here would be that C2 would need to be complete before E could be completed, but after completing C1 you could go on to complete D.

I have toyed with the idea of representing this directly as I did above (using some sort of directed graph), but since the goal is for the user to get an idea of the "status" of the workflow quickly, the academic approach might be overwhelming. Is there a good way to condense this information into something more traditional, like a progress bar, or should I bite the bullet and draw the graph as above?