Participatory Design and Cyclic Improvement of Business Processes with Workflow Management Systems

We have a lot of results about participatory design and also an extensive discussion about how to conduct a continuous improvement of business processes with the help of workflow management systems. However, the synthesis of both perspectives is lacking. In the following we make some suggestions on how to overcome this gap. The necessity of participation in the course of business process improvement is widely acknowledged, but with different intentions. The management has recognized that they need to explore the knowledge and experience of their staff. Employees and their representatives try to prevent negative consequences of rationalization and expect their working conditions to be improved. Caused by these diverging interests we have a variety of modes and ways of how participation is practiced. Therefore we try to describe a framework explaining which mode of participation is sensible or crucial for which phase in the course of continuous business process improvement.