When using conditionals in ansible, most of the time you'll use 'when' and specify which parameter should be checked. This can however result in a rather lengthy and confusing list of tasks that can be easily reduced. Here's an example of a list of tasks that create users: - name: create regular users | --password, --groups become: true loop: "{{ users }}" user: name: "{{ item.name }}" uid: "{{ item.uid }}" shell: "{{ item.shell | default('/bin/sh') }}" when: not item.groups is defined and not item.password is defined tags: - all - users - name: create regular users | --password, ++groups become: true loop: "{{ users }}" user: name: "{{ item.name }}" uid: "{{ item.uid }}" shell: "{{ item.shell | default('/bin/sh') }}" groups: "{{ item.groups }}" when: ite