Decision Noise Instrument (DNI): Estimating Decision Noise in Business Processes

Abstract

Business processes in which decisions are made by human resources suffer from noise. Noise is unwanted variability, which leads to inconsistent and unrepeatable decisions and impacts trust negatively. In this paper, we present the Decision Noise Instrument (DNI) to quantitatively estimate the noise that can be attributed to unknown factors affecting the actors who carry out the business process. For our estimation, we solely use readily available data from business information systems that support the execution of the process. In our method, we limit the influence of factors that cannot be attributed to actors. The DNI makes it possible to compare the noise levels between and within business processes. Based on that comparison, further investigation into the problem and noise reduction efforts can be prioritized. We evaluate the DNI on a claim handling process of UWV, a public service provider in the Netherlands. Our results show that we can estimate differences between the noise levels of several decisions within the selected process of UWV. By drilling down on a decision, the subgroups that have the most impact on the noise level are identified.