The general recommendation when exporting is that you should manually select as few items as possible for the package to include what you need. Let the export engine pull in all dependencies, instead of manually choosing everything. For example, if you have a Workflow life cycle and a Workview Application to export, but those contain references to Unity Forms, scripts, and Document Types, then you should not explicitly select the forms, scripts, or Document Types manually. The primary reason is to avoid bloating the package with items that you may believe are needed but might not be necessary. If an item is referenced by something that was selected for export, it will be included in the export package as either a full or partial reference.
After the export has been performed, the user can either download the package file or customize the export. This will take the user to a tree view that shows all of the items that were exported, with referenced items nested below the referencing item. This will help you determine what caused a given item to be included in the package. Additionally, the user has the ability to switch references from full to partial or from partial to full and run the export again to see the results. This allows the user to override the default partial reference behavior. For example, if you want a referenced life cycle to be included in its entirety, you can change it from a partial reference to full reference.