Task Analysis—Instructional Systems Development

Jobs Versus Processes

The thrust of total quality management (TQM) and reengineering movements centers on improving processes to increase efficiency and effectiveness. Some organizations that adopted TQM define work totally in terms of processes, not jobs. TQM encourages all employees to understand their place in the total, end-to-end, process and to strive to continually improve the effectiveness of the process. In these quality-based organizations, an employee's job might entail performing one segment of a larger process or many segments of multiple processes.

The fundamental difference between job- and process-based work is the degree of change in process-based work. Continuous quality improvement requires employees and their work teams to ...