Hey niall.deehan,

thanks for bringing this up and providing all the necessary details already!
We'll try to reproduce and root cause this as soon as possible.

Thanks and stay tuned,
Tobias

Hey niall.deehan,

I gave it a try and have to say I cannot reproduce that behavior.

• I used Run 7.16.0-ee and added your files as resources - all worked as expected with the variable being present at the start and with adding it when the task has been created already. The conditional event just kicks in as expected.
• I also tried it with the https://github.com/camunda/camunda-engine-unittest, adding your resources and the following test cases - both are green on my machine.

    @Test
    @Deployment(resources = {"BoundaryEventProcess.bpmn", "NiceLittleForm.form"})
    public void shouldFireConditionOnExistingTask() {
      // Given we create a new process instance
      ProcessInstance processInstance = runtimeService().startProcessInstanceByKey("BookProcess");
      // Then it should be active
      assertThat(processInstance).isActive();
      // And it should be the only instance
      assertThat(processInstanceQuery().count()).isEqualTo(1);
      // And there should exist just a single task within that process instance
      assertThat(task(processInstance)).isNotNull();
  
      // When we set the variable
      runtimeService().setVariable(processInstance.getId(), "stop", true);
      // Then the process instance should be ended
      assertThat(processInstance).isEnded();
    }
    
    @Test
    @Deployment(resources = {"BoundaryEventProcess.bpmn", "NiceLittleForm.form"})
    public void shouldFireConditionWithExistingVariable() {
      // Given we create a new process instance with the condition variable
      ProcessInstance processInstance = runtimeService().startProcessInstanceByKey(
          "BookProcess", 
          Variables.createVariables().putValue("stop", true)
      );
  
      // Then the process instance should be ended
      assertThat(processInstance).isEnded();
    }
  

Let me know if I missed something when trying to reproduce this.

Best,
Tobias

Closing this due to inactivity.
If you can reproduce this again, feel free to reopen.
We can then try to identify why this doesn't fail in my setups.

Best,
Tobias