Understanding the Role of Communication and Hands-On Experience in Work Process Design for All

The paper motivates the explicit recognition of communication and hands-on experience when stakeholders design work processes, both, on the individual and on the organization level. As a straightforward implementation Subject-oriented Business Process Management is reviewed. Its constructs for modelling and resulting capabilities for seamless execution when using a corresponding suite are discussed. In particular, it is shown how stakeholders can articulate their way of task accomplishment in terms of communication relationships while producing an executable model. As the behaviour of all participating stakeholders in a specific business process can be expressed in terms of communication acts, adjusting individual and task-relevant flows of communication leads to a complete picture of an organization in operation. Moreover, subject-oriented representations allow executing the resulting workflow without further transformations. They enable interactive experience of business processes which in turn facilitates (collective) reflection and redesign. In this way, stakeholders can trigger and control seamless round-trips in organizational development. It minimizes development costs and social risks, since alternative ways of task accomplishment can be negotiated before becoming operational in daily business.