Work process analysis: a necessary step in the development of decision support systems. An aviation safety case study

This paper demonstrates the importance of work process modeling and support ing data analysis in system development. To illustrate the process of model ing for system development, we describe how traditional task analysis was u sed in our effort to understand the work processes associated with the Fede ral Aviation Administration's (FAA's) airworthiness and operations surveill ance inspection activities. Further, the integration of risk assessment tec hniques resulted in a validated task analysis providing a review of the as- is state of surveillance activities. It is also shown how the as-is surveil lance work processes that resulted from these studies were used as the foun dation for a re-engineered (re-eng) surveillance work process model. We con clude by describing a follow-on activity, the development of a safety criti cal work process model, which reflects an integration of the as-is and re-e ngineered work process descriptions, the human factors literature, inspecti on data analysis, federal aviation regulations and identified areas of safe ty criticality. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.