Use of the WCA framework points up a number of common confusions that occur when business professionals think about systems. Some of these confusions are summarized in the following table:

Customer	Product
Ignoring the customer and the fact that the customer should evaluate the product Treating managers as customers even though they don't use the work system's product directly	Forgetting that the purpose of a work system is to produce a product for an internal or external customer Forgetting that the product of a work system is often not the product of the organization

Business Process
Defining the business process so narrowly that an improvement has little consequence Defining the business process so broadly that it involves a wide range of products and customers and is difficult to analyze coherently; in particular, defining the business process as the firm's entire value chain (which usually contains a number of separate business processes)	Confusing business process measures (such as consistency and productivity) with product measures (such as cost to the customer and quality perceived by the customer) Thinking about the business process as a theoretical set of steps and ignoring whether it is adequately supported by participants, information, and technology

Participants	Information	Technology
Ignoring the incentives felt by participants and ignoring other pressures on them Focusing on "users" rather than participants, thereby over-emphasizing IT and under-emphasizing how the work system operates and what it produces	Assuming that better information will generate better results Downplaying the importance of soft information not captured by formal systems	Assuming that better technology will generate better results Focusing on technology without thinking about whether it makes a difference in the work system

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