Task Analysis (Social Work)

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.