Avoid shared responsibilities for tasks by people from different functional units
Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)
The idea behind this redesign pattern is that tasks for which different departments share responsibility are more likely to be a source of neglect and conflict.
Reducing the overlap in responsibilities should lead to a better quality of task execution. A higher responsiveness to available work items may be developed also, so that clients are served quicker. On the other hand, reducing the effective number of resources that is available for a work item may have a negative effect on its throughput time, as more queuing may occur.
Foundational free Patterns
Combine small activities into composite activities
Establish a case-based mindset
Remove batch-processing and periodic activities from your business process
Reduce the number of contacts with customers and third parties
Delegate and optimize your operations
Move activities to more appropriate places
Consider whether it is eco-friendly to let humans work over machines
Offer customers the possibility to choose among privacy settings
Preference-based task assignment
Let people do what they love to do