Towards a human reliability assessment in process model development: An empirical investigation on routing elements

Process models provide a sound basis for quality management systems (QMS). Inconsistencies between process models and corporate reality are a common phenomenon in corporate practice. Erroneous routing is a major source for these inconsistencies that might hinder process implementation and maintenance as well as continuous improvement efforts. The approach presented in this paper accounts for a more active participation of employees in order to further increase the economical benefit of QMS. To this purpose, a human performance analysis in process model development with regard to routing elements was conducted. The results derived from data of 64 subjects show that omission and erroneous execution of routing elements is considerably higher for novices than for subjects with theoretical knowledge and experienced modelers. However, routing elements like the split and join or an embedded iteration are prone to reasoning fallacies and possible sources for inconsistencies.