The organizing committee for the BPM 2012 conference has accepted a proposal for the First International Workshop on Adaptive Case Management  (ACM2012).  It will be a half or full day workshop (depending on the quantity of papers accepted) on Sept 3, 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia.  That is the Monday before the week-long 10th installment of the BPM conference series hosted this year by the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu.

Official Title: The First International Workshop on Adaptive Case Management and other non-workflow approaches to BPM (ACM 2012) in conjunction with BPM 2012

Goal: While practitioners are trying to overcome the restrictions of workflow thinking, the research on the topic is somewhat lagging. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss theoretical and practical problems and solutions in the area of non-workflow based approaches to BPM in general, and ACM (as a leading movement) in particular. This workshop is aimed to promote new, non-traditional ways of modelling and controlling business processes, the ones that suit better the dynamic environment in which contemporary enterprises and public organizations function.

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: 1 June 2012
• Notification due 2 July 2012
• Camera-ready submission deadline: 30 July 2012
• Workshop: 3 September 2012

Submissions Categories:

• Position papers raising relevant questions in the workshop area, identifying problems and providing a glimpse of solution for a given problem. Representing a basis for discussion, a position paper does not necessarily need to include solutions to its stated problems. Position papers must not exceed 4 pages.
• Idea papers exploring the history, successes, and challenges for various non-workflow approaches to BPM and outlining research roadmaps for the future. Contrary to short position papers, idea papers should provide the in-depth analysis of a problem, review its existing solutions, demonstrate insufficiency of these solutions and suggest new (yet unevaluated but well argued) solutions. Idea papers must not exceed 12 pages.
• Experience reports presenting challenges encountered in practice, their related case studies, success and failure stories. An experience report should clearly describe the working context, and focus on the problem and on the lessons learned. Experience reports should be complete and allow for rigorous testing of research theories methods and tools. Experience reports must be limited to 5-12 pages.
• Research papers reporting original results in the area addressed by the workshop. A research paper should clearly describe the problem tackled, explore the relevant state of the art, describe the proposed solution and provide a preliminary validation of this solution. Research papers must not exceed 12 pages.

The real motivation for holding a workshop came from Irina Rychkova of the University Paris and Ilia Bider of Ibisoft in Stockholm who both got me involved as well.  Those who know me well may find it ironic that first academic workshop is being held in conjunction with the academic BPM conference.  Indeed, I criticized the BPM 2010 conference for its complete lack of case management topics.  While many proponents of BPM seem entrenched in Taylorist ideas that behind every job is a simple fixed process, there are many others who are searching simply for ways to make workers more efficient, regardless of whether the process can be predicted or not.  The forming of this workshop is evidence of that, and association with the well respected BPM conference series, it is likely that this workshop will include many well considered rigorous papers on Adaptive Case Management research.

I have been to Tallinn only once before, when I took the ferry across the Baltic from Helsinki where I was working on the TeamWARE Flow product in the early 1990’s.   That visit was marvelous, and I can only expect that Estonia much have changed remarkably in the long time since it has been out from under the shadow of the Soviet Union.  I am looking forward to it.

This is the third of three ACM events already planned for 2012, the other two are the ACM Awards, and the ACM Live Virtual Event in June.