A human-centered system is one in which humans, supported by computerized aids, play a key role. It can be defined as a combination of humans, organizational structures, rules, procedures, and computerized tools. The authors present a formal framework to characterize the interaction between a human-centered system and its automated support. They aim to identify the basic properties and features that make it possible to formally define the concepts of inconsistency and deviation.

The authors have applied their framework to the assessment of the features of several process-centered software engineering environments. They argue that completeness is mainly related to the features and characteristics of the language used to model processes, while coherence is more strictly related to the architecture of the process support system. The authors believe that the results of this work can be used both to assess and compare existing systems and to clarify and guide further research work, and moreover, that it can be used in a more general context to study the relationship between a computerized system and the real world with which it interacts.