A human-oriented tuning of workflow management systems

Workflow Management Systems (WfMS's) offer a tremendous potential for organizations. Shorter lead times, less mistakes in work handoffs, and a better insight into process execution are some of the most notable advantages experienced in practice. At the same time, the introduction of these systems on the work floor undoubtedly brings great changes in the way that professionals work. If a WfMS's work coordination is experienced as too rigid or mechanistic, this may negatively affect employees' motivation, performance and satisfaction. In this paper, we propose a set of measures to "tune" functioning workflow systems and minimize such effects. The measures we propose do not require undue cost, time, or organizational changes, as they characteristically lie within the configuration options of a WfMS. We have asked an expert panel to select and validate the 6 most promising measures, which we present in this paper. From our evaluation of three commercial WfMS's, we conclude that it depends on the specific system to what level these general measures can be easily implemented.