Towards a Fundamental Structure for Tasks

Abstract

No one can agree what the magnitude of a single step of a procedure is since different actors in a system will have differing understanding of the internal complexity of their tasks. Thus a rigid hierarchy is inappropriate when using procedures to describe highly detailed activities or larger composite processes. There appears to be, however, a fundamental unit to procedural activity which we identify as the "step", and which can be used to describe structured activities of any level of complexity.