diff --git a/awx/main/tests/factories/README.md b/awx/main/tests/factories/README.md
index 8b864d0708..c451c02598 100644
--- a/awx/main/tests/factories/README.md
+++ b/awx/main/tests/factories/README.md
@@ -47,3 +47,19 @@ examples
 
     objects = create_organization('test-org', persisted=False)
     assert not objects.organization.pk
+
+patterns
+--------
+
+`mk` functions are single object fixtures. They should create only a single object with the minimum deps.
+They should also accept a `persited` flag, if they must be persisted to work, they raise an error if persisted=False
+
+`generate` and `apply` functions are helpers that build up the various parts of a `create` functions objects. These
+should be useful for more than one create function to use and should explicitly accept all of the values needed
+to execute. These functions should also be robust and have very speciifc error reporting about constraints and/or
+bad values.
+
+`create` functions compose many of the `mk` and `generate` functions to make different object
+factories. These functions when giving the minimum set of arguments should only produce a
+single artifact (or the minimum needed for that object). These should be wrapped by discoverable
+fixtures in various conftest.py files.