Contributed on October 3, 2013

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Adaptive Case Management as a Process of Construction of and Movement in a State Space

Description

Despite having a number of years of experience, adaptive case management (ACM) still does not have a theory that would differentiate it from other paradigms of business process management and support. The known attempts to formalize Case Management do not seem to help much in creating an approach that could be useful in practice. This paper suggests an approach to building such a theory based on generalization of what is used in practice on one hand and the state-oriented view on business processes on the other. In practice, ACM systems use a number of ready-made templates that are picked up and filled as necessary for the case. State-oriented view considers a process instance/case as a point moving in a specially constructed state space. The paper suggests to consider a case template as a definition of a sub-space and piking different template on the fly as constructing the state space along with moving in it when filling the template. The result is similar to what in control theory is considered a state space with variable numbers of dimensions. Beside suggestions to building a theory, the paper demonstrates the usage of the theory on an example.

Transcript

DSV SU/IbisSoft
1
Adaptive Case Management as a Process
of Construction of and Movement in a
State Space
Ilia Bider – IbisSoft/DSV SU, Stockholm, Sweden
Amin Jalali, Jens Ohlsson- DSV SU Stockholm, Sweden
Pre-proceedings: http://bit.ly/1elNT9e
Presentation at the workshop on “Adaptive Case Management and Other Non-
workflow approaches to BPM”, Graz, Austria, September 2013

Marrying collaboration and creativity to business processes

DSV SU/IbisSoft
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Goal with presentation
Outline a theory/model that can be used for
analysis, comparison and development of ACM
systems.
Why do we need a theory
1. “There is nothing more practical than a good theory” – Kurt
Levin
2. Existing theories are activities/task based, which does not
satisfies the needs of ACM
Why the latter is not satisfactory?
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Activity-based CM theory outline VS …
From “Case handling: a new
paradigm for business
process support”
Activity is an integrated part
and cannot be excluded from
the CM/ACM system
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… VS Non-activity-based CM outline
A CM system does
not mandatory need
to support
activities/tasks/
operations
Supporting progress of
reaching goals and producing
results has enough value on
its own
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Corresponds to practice –
form/template based CM
Application
Form
Decision-
making
Form
Decision
delivery
Form
Application/Decision-making/
Decision Delivery
Form
Quite common in Swedish municipalities and other public offices
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Example of a form
How a theory for form based CM and ACM should look like?
A form for BBiC case – social office of a Swedish municipalities
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Background for the theory: state-
oriented view on business processes
Main notions (borrowed from the dynamical systems
theory)
• Process instance – a trajectory in a multidimensional state
space (+time)
• Process type/model – a set of allowed trajectories in the state
space (+time)
• Goal – an end point of an allowed trajectory
• Activity –movement in the state space directed towards the
goal
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Illustration of the main notions
• For each item Ordered = Delivered
• To pay = Total + Freight + Tax
• Ordered > Delivered shipment
• To pay > Invoiced invoicing
• Invoiced = To pay
• Paid = Invoiced
State space
Goal definition
Activities
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Advantages of state-oriented view
• Allows both imperative and constraint-based definition of a
process-type.
• Imperative – specify a set of valid trajectories via chain of
movements
• Constraint-based – forbid movements between certain points of
the state space
• Provide a tool of determining the progress achieved in the
process instance independently of how it was historically
achieved
• Can serve as a basis for developing process support system that
does not understand the notion of activity. Defining a process
state and its visualization give the user possibility to track the
progress of each case
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Using state-oriented view as a
theoretical backing of the form-
based CM/ACM
• Possible to use in the following manner:
• Forms – visualization of the state space.
• Fields – visualization of dimensions
• Problems with Adaptive Case Management :
• there can be many different forms related to the process
type, while only few is used for any particular instance/case
• The same form can be used multiple times
• Solution – consider the state space not fixed but constructed on
the fly during the process instance/case life span
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Example: Course occasion in DSV SU
Forms to fill during preparation and giving a course
Could be a first occasion of a completely new course or a
regular occasion of an existing course
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Example of a form
Form for lecture/lesson
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A course case in progress
Legend:
• Blue – filled form
• Green – partially filled form
• White – form that can be filled
• Gray – form that cannot be filled as yet
Restrictions on filling forms
Form synchronizations
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Synchronization
Form for lecture/lesson
Synchronized form for
teacher feedback
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Specifying restrictions
A matrix that specifies dependencies between the forms
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Specifying synchronization
A matrix that specifies synchronization between the forms
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Interpretation from
state-oriented view
Each form specifies a
fragment of the state
space
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Interpretation from state-oriented
view
• Field – a dimension of a state space
• Form – a fragment of the state space
• Picking a form – adding a fragment to the overall state-space
of the given process instance/case
• Filling a form – moving in the sub-space defined by a form
• Form synchronization – restrictions on construction of the
state space (an example – there can be others)
• Restrictions on the order of filling forms – restrictions on
movements in the overall state-space
Summary handling a case in ACM is constructing and moving in
the state space
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Possible usage & work to-do
Usage:
• Building ACM systems and/or tools for ACM system development
• Analyzing the existing ACM tools and systems, e.g.:
• Whether they support form synchronization
• Whether they supports restrictions on movement and which
types
To-do:
• List of useful restrictions on state-space construction and
movement (similar to the workflow patterns)
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Thank you for your attention!
Q & A
Ilia Bider, DSV SU/IbisSoft
Email: ilia@dsv.su.se
ilia@ibissoft.se