The story of a working workflow management system

Abstract

This work presents experiences with the adopting of a workflow management system in a large financial institution. We describe the gradual evolution of a traditional work process, from manual to computational regulation of coordination. The study shows that computational workflows may increase labor productivity remarkably and in general have significant economic benefits, but also that to make current workflow technologies yield such results requires unorthodox twists and tweaks in the workflow design to allow for worker control and process overview. The paper argues that workflow technology is now at a stage where the contribution of CSCW is obviously needed.