Adaptive Case Management: Overview and Research Challenges

2012

The subject of this article is a knowledge-based company constantly looking for new solutions in its operations. As this management discipline is progressing rapidly, the authors intend to present a new approach to supporting management processes at an enterprise. The first part of the article discusses the practice of knowledge management and sketches the picture of a knowledge worker at a modern organisation. The next part presents a new trend in knowledge support processes, namely Adaptive Case Management. The authors describe the theoretical grounds as well as the opportunities for practical implementation.

Proceedings of the 2015 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, 2015

The paper sets out from a central proposition that the concept of adaptive case management (ACM) bears on the evolution of business decision support and knowledge management in modern businesses. While presenting the state of the art in efforts to blend enterprise resources planning/business process management (ERP/BPM) systems with knowledge management systems (KMS) and decision support systems (DSS), the authors observe that the classical platform combining ERP/BPM with KMS and DSS was based on the interaction of three separate layers/subsystems and that, throughout the past decade, that approach proved satisfactory. However, in the last few years it has been increasingly felt that the approach to business process management and enterprise resource planning, as well as to their integration with knowledge management and decision support, needs to be modified. The dynamic and adaptive nature of some business processes poses challenges that the classical BPM approach cannot adequately address. Adaptive case management has been developed to better cope with such challenges. It makes it, on the one hand, easier to align a business to rapidly changing requirements and conditions, and, on the other, it allows organizations to more effectively exploit the potential inherent in organizational knowledge and information resources. The paper discusses the evolution of KMS and DSS from the perspective of their application in ACM environments.

Data & Knowledge …, 2005

Information Systems Management, 2013

Since the intensive computer automation of operational and administrative processes there has been increase in demand for knowledge intensive work. Knowledge workers have significant impact on companies they work in but the processes they use in their work are not well supported by technology. Case management with its data centric and artefact based approach to business process management is emerging as a way to provide knowledge workers with flexibility they need in planning and executing their tasks. In January 2013 Object Management Group released specification of Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN). Aim of this paper is to present CMMN basic concepts and provide some insights in ways how CMMN can be used to support knowledge workers and their effectiveness and efficiency.

Workflow management technology has profoundly transformed the way complex tasks are being handled in modern, large-scale organizations. However, it is mostly those systems' inherent lack of flexibility that hinders their broad acceptance, and that is perceived as annoyance by users. In this context, Adaptive Process Management and Case Handling provide two very different paradigms, which both attempt to make process management more flexible and user-friendly. In this paper, we compare strengths and weaknesses of these two paradigms, and point out situations in which each is particularly appropriate. We further outline ways, in which either technology can be enhanced by crucial concepts from the other. This integration of flexibility approaches has the potential to remedy fundamental problems still present in each technology on its own.

Adaptive Case Management (ACM) implies a shift from the process centric view in Business Process Management (BPM) to an information centric view. The shift is motivated by the need for organizations to become more responsive to changes. Such a shift should be guided by some kind of framework in order to be manageable. To this end, the construct of the activity modalities is proposed. These modalities – objectivation, contextualization, spatialization, temporalization, stabilization, and transition – stand for innate predispositions that humans employ to coordinate and carry out actions. A central tenet of this position is that all modalities need to be employed in activity. This is used to analyse the Business Process Modeling Notation, the shift from BPM to ACM, and to propose a research road map. Some alternative modelling approaches from the Ericsson telecom company are suggested as forerunners to an integrated modelling suite that supports all activity modalities

2008

Zusammenfassung The need for more flexiblity of process-aware information systems (PAIS) has been discussed for several years and different approaches for adaptive process management have emerged. Only few of them provide support for both changes of individual process instances and the propagation of process type changes to a collection of related process instances. The knowledge about changes has not yet been exploited by any of these systems. To overcome this practical limitation, PAIS must capture the whole process life cycle and all kinds of changes in an integrated way. They must allow users to deviate from the predefined process in exceptional situations, and assist them in retrieving and reusing knowledge about previously performed changes. In this paper we present a proof-of concept implementation of a learning adaptive PAIS. The prototype combines the ADEPT2 framework for dynamic process changes with concepts and methods provided by case-based reasoning (CBR) technology.

IEEE Internet Computing, 2013

Casebook embraces social and collaboration technology, analytics, and intelligence to advance the state of the art in case management from systems of record to a system of engagement for knowledge workers. It addresses complex, inefficient work practices, information loss during hand offs between teams, and failure to learn from previous case experience. Intelligent agents help people adapt to changing work practices by tracking process evolution and providing updates and recommendations. Social collaboration surrounding cases integrates communication with information and supports collaborative roadmapping to enable people to work as they collaborate, thus accelerating how quickly and accurately they handle cases.

2016 IEEE 20th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop (EDOCW), 2016

Knowledge workers already face a broad range of tools to support their work, e. g. adaptive case management systems, tailored information systems, groupware, and other (process) support systems. Case data is scattered across many systems, and the overlapping structured, semi-structured, and adhoc processes involved further impede keeping track of related data and activities. Organizations are socio-technical entities, and interactions have significant impact on their success. Today, around 50% of the work in the US is knowledge work, and other countries show a similar tendency. Improving integration of appropriate tools for knowledge work and augmenting support for interactions therefore offers to increase productivity in a very influential part of the workforce. Knowledge workers are well aware of the pragmatic intention of their communicative acts, but currently their systems are not. We suggest to use Speech Act Theory to enable useful inferences and to improve integration of the various tools for knowledge work. A focus on interactions raises awareness for the pragmatic intention and commitments in particular. It can help providing line markings for knowledge workers by facilitating compliance monitoring for interactions and artifacts stemming from many participating systems and manual documentation. Interactions already tie many separate systems together, and standardizing as well as partially automating them can therefore further simplify integration. Speechact-based adaptive case management offers to increase process transparency, enable useful inferences, and integrate structured, semi-structured, and ad-hoc processes.

BPM (Demos), 2016

Today's work is increasingly characterized by unpredictable collaborative processes called knowledge work. Some types of knowledge work are supported by case management tools which typically provide regulated access to case-related information. Knowledge workers are well aware of the pragmatic dimension of their communicative acts, but the systems they are using currently are not. This demo paper presents a prototype of a speech-act-based adaptive case management tool we call Agora. In Agora, we focus on interactions of a case and enable flexible documentation of ad-hoc interactions and activities as well as support for (semi-)structured processes. Interactions are linked to appropriate artifacts of the case. The approach enables useful inferences by the user and automatically by a system from all documented interactions and caserelated data. For example, it can help in unveiling assertions and commitments, finding unfulfilled promises, and automatic reactions to certain interactions. Thereby, the approach facilitates integration of structured, semi-structured and ad-hoc processes.