If you’ve been working with workflows for a while you’ve seen the “Failed on Start” and “Error Occurred” statuses that happen if you mismatch the assembly information or leak an exception back to the workflow foundation, respectively.  However, I found a new behavior.  If you create a workflow that requires a content type through a feature and that feature doesn’t deploy the content type correctly then you won’t see anything when you start the workflow.

When I say anything, I mean it.  You won’t see a status column for the workflow added.  You won’t see a workflow history.  You won’t be able to tell that SharePoint took the command.  However, if you explore the ULS logs you’ll see an error indicating that the content type for the workflow is missing.

When you’re developing it might be helpful to keep the ULS logs handy.