Compare methods

	Ecomap Analysis	Task Analysis (Social Work)
Field	Social Work	Social Work
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1978	1992
Originator	Ann Hartman	William J. Reid & Laura Epstein (task-centered practice)
Type	Graphical, qualitative person-in-environment assessment tool	Qualitative procedure for decomposing a goal into sequenced, accomplishable tasks
Seminal source	Hartman, A. (1978). Diagrammatic assessment of family relationships. Social Casework, 59(8), 465–476.	Reid, W. J. (1992). Task Strategies: An Empirical Approach to Clinical Social Work. Columbia University Press. ISBN: 9780231076876
Aliases	Ecomap, Eco-Map, Ecological Map, Hartman Ecomap	Task-Centered Task Analysis, Task Implementation Sequence Analysis, Reid Task Analysis, Task Breakdown Analysis (Social Work)
Related	3	3
Summary	An ecomap is a graphical map of a household or individual set within their social environment, showing the connections between the focal system and the external systems around it — extended family, work, school, health care, friends, agencies, religion, and recreation — and coding each connection as strong, tenuous, or stressful, with arrows for the flow of energy and resources. Ecomap analysis is the practice of drawing and interpreting this map to assess the person-in-environment, the central organizing concept of social work. It was introduced by Ann Hartman in 1978.	In task-centered social work, task analysis is the qualitative procedure of breaking a client's agreed-upon goal into a sequence of concrete, accomplishable tasks, then examining what helps and hinders the completion of each. Rooted in William Reid and Laura Epstein's task-centered model, it turns a large or vague problem into a chain of small, reviewable actions for the client and worker, and treats the success or failure of each task as data for refining the plan. It is both a planning device and an analytic lens on the change process.